Police didi lends her ear to fight child sex abuse

Mumbai: More than 50 girls and boys, aged between 4 and 14 screamed in unison in a hall in Chembur as cops looked on. The large screen in front had actor Aamir Khan talking to them about “three danger spots” that strangers cannot be allowed to touch. “Once more, at your loudest,” said a police officer. The children, mostly from a neighbourhood slum, complied happily, all smiles at their deafening feat.“You must shout, inform your family or a police didi,’’ said the cop. The kids then ran out for snacks, but not before repeating what they had just learnt about “good touch, bad touch’’ at an innovative workshop conducted by the Mumbai police in Zone VI.
It was a different, gentler face of the police on display. Their focus was to educate children directly about dangers of child sexual abuse and they are doing it in a child friendly manner. The project is called, “police didi”—a first such proactive step in preventive policing to protect children in the city. “The police didi will be just a call away. Her numbers, including cell number will be on stickers that each child gets to stick on his or her school bag,” said Sangram Nishandar, Deputy Police Commissioner (Zone VI) whose brainchild it was to launch the initiative, a year ago.
A brutal rape and murder of a 12-year-old girl in Shivaji Nagar in 2014, her body found dumped in a bin, had triggered the initiative. Nishandar launched an awareness drive for kids, asked his women officers to help and with some assistance from NGOs set to work “to ensure that no child should suffer such horror”. Sans any publicity his team covered over 23,500 children across 149 schools last year.
Initial hiccups such as resistance from elite schools aside, the scheme has already attracted several success stories in the crime-prone areas of Chembur, Cheetah Camp, Nehru Nagar, Govandi and Tilak Nagar, police said. In Chembur a pre-teen got a molester, Shamlal Chavan, arrested in January, when even adults whom he used to harass had no courage to complain, said cops Archana Patil and Tabassum Magdum. “The child convinced her mother that the police didi must be informed about what the molester did,” they said, enthusiastically.
The scheme’s success may get a chance to grow. It will now be implemented across the city.
Any initial misgiving about the “extra work” soon disappeared for the team of mostly police sub-inspectors including Tejaswini Patil, Shobha Dhivre, Sarita Musale, Ashwini Khambe, Manisha Patil among others. Manisha Shirke who conducted the training for other cops said, “We are teaching kids to be alert. They don’t know what is happening to them is wrong since often it is by a person known to them or who they see daily, like a watchman or driver, domestic help. They don’t know how to respond, We are teaching them how…little boys are equally vulnerable. It is our social responsibility to not just detect crime but to prevent it.”
The cops took help and audio-visual aids including animated films from child rights NGOs like Child line, Pratham, Sneha, Majlis and Koro to engage and connect with the target audience.