SHILLONG: The Assembly Committee on Women Empowerment led by its chairperson Ampareen Lyngdoh met the DGP R Chandranathan and sought his intervention to improve conviction rate relating to cases of crime against women and children.
During the meeting of the committee on Tuesday, Lyngdoh expressed concern over rise in crime against women and children and low conviction rate. The committee also sought the status and progress of the POCSO cases, rape and murder cases in the state between 2018-2020.
She informed that the committee was happy that the police department has progressed substantially on maintaining data relating to crimes against women and children, but added that they were quite alarmed that the conviction rate of all cases was low.
“We have requested the DGP to speed up all these cases because as per the report submitted, cases from 2015 are still pending and incomplete. We have asked the DGP to take into consideration of dignity of women in distress, dignity of rape victims, dignity of women murdered gruesomely and to ensure that women victims, irrespective of the merits and demerits of their cases, should always be portrayed in a dignified manner,” she added.
Forensic lab
The committee member HM Shangpliang said that they also discussed the state of the forensic lab.
“We found out that there are a lot of things to be bought and upgraded. Many sophisticated equipment and computerised machines require to be bought by the government and therefore this committee felt that because of the non-functioning of FSL, investigation and conviction of many cases are pending,” he said. The committee also met the officials of the department of social welfare and appealed for the establishment of a rehabilitation centre for women and girls addicted to substance and alcohol abuse. Lyngdoh lamented that no such centre has been set in Meghalaya till date.
The committee also discussed the fact that several NGOs involved in the protection of women are not getting their funds.
“We feel disturbed to know that these NGOs, despite the fact that they collaborated and volunteered to assist the government in taking care and assisting women in distress are not getting funds for many years,” she said.
“We also brought to the notice of the commissioner and secretary, social welfare the fact that orphanages are also suffering because of the lack of funding. We are happy that the official assured the committee that they would immediately look into the matter and release funds to all centres to help the destitute women and orphanages,” the chairperson said.
Shangpliang also asked the social welfare department officials to expedite the appointment of Chairperson for State Commission for Protection of Child Rights. “After the retirement of former Chairperson Meena Kharkongor, there is no full-fledged chairperson,” he said.