Reporting instances of abuse and cruelty by staffers or persons in-charge at child care institutions (CCI) is not easy. While the victims themselves are unable to directly report them due to the imbalance in power, most such crimes are reported to the police by either parents or child rights bodies and child welfare committees (CWC).
On the one hand, the parents of these children, who are mostly daily wage labourers, are either unaware of how to, or not inclined to report the crimes to the police. On the other hand, the CWCs’ first instinct in most cases is to “talk and arrive at a settlement” without having to escalate the matter to the police.
With the 2021 amendment to the Juvenile Justice (Care and Protections) Act making these crimes non-cognisable along with several other serious crimes under the special law, experts and child rights bodies have raised the alarm saying this would make reporting them to the police even more difficult.
