Indian minister for women and child development Maneka Gandhi calls the country to establish a national register of sex offenders after police arrested a pedophile who has abducted and raped hundreds of young girls for more than a decade.
Police arrested 38-year-old Sunil Rastogi as they were investigating sexual assaults committed against three girls aged nine to 10 in an eastern city of Delhi. During the investigation, Rastogi revealed that he would lure young girls with new clothes, and bring them to abandoned buildings and secluded areas, where he would eventually rape them. He unapologetically confessed to doing that over 500 girls since 2004.
The police also discovered that Rastogi is a former convict of sexually assaulting a girl in 2006, and served imprisonment for six months. Gandhi, who is enraged with the rising number of sex offences in India, exclaimed that the sex assaults could have been prevented if her proposal for a national register of sex offenders had been approved.
"This tailor has apparently been caught before in 2006, so if he has been caught before, why is his name not on a national register of sexual offenders?"
Gandhi mentioned that the proposal is currently under the consideration of the ministry of home affairs which is planning to actualise the process of setting up a national register of all criminals in India, including sex offenders.
The register record is not a foreign idea as many countries are seen implementing the system. For instance, the United States has an online database that provides information related to the offender, such as offender's photo, address and other details of crime. The information is accessible to the public.
In other countries like Britain, the policy monitors offenders who are registered at the local police station. Doctors, youth leaders, landlords and other key people within the community are also informed of the offenders.
A recent report from India's National Crime Records Bureau indicates a serious rise on sexual offenses such as molestation, harassment, and pedophilia. Some 34,651 number of rapes were reported in 2015, a 36 percent increase since 2010.
