Meghalaya High Court Chief Justice Mohammad Yaqoob Mir urged law enforcing people to implement laws effectively to make people fear of the law and ensure that citizens do not lose faith in the system.
Addressing a judicial colloquium on Anti-Human Trafficking organised by the Meghalaya State Judicial Academy at Meghalaya High Court here, Justice Mir talked about the menace of human trafficking in the Northeast.
Citing poverty as one of the main reasons, he said that human trafficking is not only a crime but serious exploitation and human rights violation where lakhs of victims from Asia were also trafficked.
“When we have plenty of laws in place including stringent clauses, why trafficking and other crimes are taking place? Why laws not able to deter such crimes and where are the deficiencies? But there are some flaws somewhere. Amending laws and incorporating stringent clauses will not help if the implementation is not effective. We have to ensure that people fear of the law and ensure that they do not lose faith in the system,” he said.
Talking about the alarming growth of human trafficking which he mentioned is the third largest organized crime across the globe, Justice Mir said, if the crime is not stopped, catastrophe will occur as called for tackling it collectively and together discharge the constitutional obligations to curb this menace, domestically, nationally and internationally.
Pointing out that bringing offender to book and rehabilitating victims is a challenge, Justice Mir stressed the need to provide proper training to police officers and ensure that people have faith in the system.
The judicial colloquium on Anti-Human Trafficking was held throughout the country to sensitize magistrates and judges as to how women and children experience the process of law relating to trafficking, to enable magistrates and judges to take proactive decisions and exercise discretion as provided under the law that will be most beneficial and just to the victim, and most stringent to the traffickers and focus on procedures for speedier disposal of trafficking cases and taking stringent punitive action against traffickers.