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‘Frame guidelines to protect kids from abuse’

The Delhi High Court has asked the central and Delhi governments to apprise it on the steps taken for framing guidelines to prevent sexual abuse of children in schools and educational institutions.

Issuing notice, a division bench of Chief Justice D Murugesan and Justice Rajiv Sahai Endlaw sought a response by 5 December from the union ministry of women and child development and the Sheila Diskhit-led Delhi government on a plea filed by an NGO seeking guidelines for prevention of sexual abuse of children.

The HAQ Centre for Child Rights filed a public interest litigation (PIL) pointing out that the Juvenile Justice Act rules make it mandatory for the authorities to frame the guidelines, but neither the central or Delhi governments had done so.

Seeking a direction to government to issue the guidelines, petition said: ‘Every person, school or such other educational institutions should abide by guidelines issued by central government and state government.’

‘However, the fact remains that till date, neither the central government nor the government of Delhi have issued any such guidelines for prevention of sexual abuse of children.’

The plea further stated that the NGO, on several occasions, had advocated with both the governments about the need to frame and issue the guidelines.

Advocate Anant Asthana, who filed the petition, said: ‘Despite increasing incidents of sexual abuse of children in institutions being reported and despite there being an urgent need for such guidelines for schools, educational institutions, government have not issued these guidelines as mandated by law. Now with no guidelines, action is taken against the accused after the incident happened.’

He said after formulation of uniform guidelines, all schools and educational institutions would have to follow the law.

‘Now, there is no lawful mechanism to protect children from sexual abuse in schools and educational institutions, but after the formulation of these guidelines, monitoring of such cases will increase.’ He said that the guidelines would make possible the early detection of child abuses cases.
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