Author: A Staff Reporter
Publication: Assam Tribune
Date: January 7, 2005
The Chairperson of the National
Commission for Women (NCW), Dr Poornima Advani, today said that the women
living in the international border areas of the State across Bangladesh,
were not safe. The unfenced and unguarded porous border has been making
the life of the Indian women unsafe in those areas, she claimed. She was
also critical of the State Government for its attitude towards many vital
issues concerning the womenfolk of the society.
She has also condemned the State
Women's Policy as she said that the State government failed to take into
confidence the State Women Commission while drafting it and demanded its
withdrawal.
Citing the example of the Nilam
Bazar area gang rape case in Karimganj district of the State, she said
that three men gang raped a young unmarried girl there about eight months
back and one of the accused in the case was suspected to be a Bangaldeshi
national. Though two of the accused in the case were nabbed, the third
one suspected to be from across the international border went into hiding
for months together even as the police remained clueless about him, she
said.
Dr Advani had been to the area on
a fact-finding mission and took up the case with the Governments at the
Centre and in the State and also with the Border Security Force (BSF) authorities.
Women on this side of the border
in that area had lodged a complaint with the NCW that they were not feeling
safe after dusk. To make things more difficult, Dr Advani said that there
was no electricity and the situation was such that anybody from the other
side of the border could enter the Indian territory by riding autorickshaws.
Recalling her visit to the house of the victim of the gang rape case, she
said that even after dusk she herself had the feeling that the she was
also not safe.
The border is extremely porous and
the deployment of the BSF personnel is also not up to the requirement.
The hotels of the area are also involved in flesh trafficking and the police
have remained non-compliant to the popular complaints on such issues, alleged
the NCW Chairperson. The NCW will again take up the issue with the Central
Government, she said.
