Kailash Satyarthi condemns Ryan school murder, says govt should create sex offenders registry

Bengaluru: Nobel laureate Kailash Satyarthi on Saturday demanded that the government should create a sex offenders registry in order to track child abusers and traffickers. In Bengaluru, the Information and Technology capital of India, as part of his ‘Bharat Yatra’, Satyarthi also called upon the engineering community to wage a “technology war” on child abuse and trafficking. The march, which started from Kanyakumari on 11 September and will conclude on 16 October at New Delhi, march aims at mobilising action against sexual abuse and trafficking of children. Addressing a gathering at the Bal Bhavan, Satyarthi said, “Sex offence registry is my demand in Bengaluru. We have to identify sex offenders so that the perpetrators can be boycotted by the community and society.” [caption id=“attachment_4051365” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] File image of Kailash Satyarthi. Reuters[/caption] “Such people should never find any job anywhere. If they are spotted at bus stands or railway stations, people should be aware of them,” said Satyarthi, who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2014. He appealed to engineers in Bengaluru to help in creating a device to track sex offenders and motivate others to promote this idea. He said, “I will talk to the government regarding sex offenders registry…but there is something which you (engineers) can make in Bengaluru. I am making an appeal to all youngsters and technologists of Bengaluru. You have to wage a technology war against child abuse and trafficking.” Satyarthi also flagged concern about children’s safety “even at homes and schools”. He said people prefer to hide the offences against children as in many cases their relatives are involved. He asked such people to speak up. He also denounced the tendency of victimising the victim. “When a girl is abused, it is said her honour is lost. What nonsense! Can the daughters of (goddesses) Lakshmi and Durga be impure?These perpetrators, predators must be exposed,” Satyarthi said. Later speaking to journalists about the murder of seven-year-old Pradyuman Thakur in Gurugram, Satyarthi said the incident is “a saga of society’s failure to protect children”. “Whatever happened in Ryan International School is another stigma on our face. It is another saga of our failure to protect our children,” he said, adding he had spoken to Pradyuman’s father.