Minister of State for Home Affairs Ajay Kumar Mishra on Wednesday informed Lok Sabha about the Crime Multi Agency Centre (Cri-MAC) of Ministry of Home Affairs.
He said that the Ministry of Home Affairs has launched a national level communication platform – Crime Multi Agency Centre (Cri-MAC) in the year 2020. Cri-MAC facilitates dissemination of information about significant crimes, including human trafficking cases, across the country on real time basis.
Cri-MAC has been launched for generating alerts on significant incidents of crime and for communication among police units across the country.
The coordination mechanism available to Police Officers across the States and Union Territories through Cri-MAC is an efficient and fast enabling-tool for sharing information about any crime in a safe and secure manner, which helps in locating and identifying the victims and also helps in prevention, detection and investigation of crimes.
The National Crime Records Bureau compiles crime statistics reported to it by the States and Union Territories and publishes the same in its annual publication ‘Crime in India’.
The latest published report is of the year 2021. A total of 2189 cases of human trafficking were reported and 1645 charge sheeted during the year 2021.
‘Police’ and ‘Public Order’ are “State-List” subjects under the Seventh Schedule to the Constitution of India. Therefore, the responsibility for preventing and countering the crime of human trafficking primarily vests with respective State Governments/Union Territories.
However, the Ministry of Home Affairs has also been supplementing the efforts of the States/UTs in this regard by providing them guidelines on preventing and countering human trafficking, etc. in the form of various Advisories issued from time to time.
The Ministry of Home Affairs has advised the States and Union Territories that appropriate ‘intelligence’ and ‘surveillance’ mechanisms may be established by them for identifying the persons/gangs involved in human trafficking cases and for gathering information about their affiliations, modus operandi, etc.
States/Union Territories have also been advised to take suitable measures for generating awareness about incidents of human trafficking at all levels and for organizing community awareness programmes and to engage with representatives of local panchayats to effectively counter the human trafficking incidents.
The Ministry has also provided financial assistance to all States/Union Territories for establishing Anti Human Trafficking Units covering all districts of the country.
The Ministry of Home Affairs also provides financial assistance to the States/Union Territories to hold ‘Judicial Colloquiums’ and ‘State level conferences’ for sensitizing law officers/Police Officers, etc. on issues relating to trafficking.