Pawan Kalyan Gets Andhra Women's Panel Notice Over His Human Trafficking Claim

In light of the massive allegations of human trafficking made by actor-politician Pawan Kalyan, the Andhra Pradesh Women's Commission on Monday issued a notice demanding that he produce detailed evidence of his claims within 10 days.

The Women's Commission directed Kalyan to furnish evidence, either personally or through a representative, about those "thousands of missing women".

"What is the proof for your fear-mongering comments which have terrorised women in society,” the notice issued under the authority of AP Women's Commission chairperson Vasireddy Padma on Monday asked.

On Sunday night, Mr Kalyan addressed a public meeting at Eluru where he alleged that nearly 30,000 women have been trafficked from the state, and that it was enabled by the AP government's grassroots governance system's foot soldiers, namely ward and village volunteers.

Mr Kalyan claimed that he is privy to intelligence from Central enforcement agencies and that's how he received information about 30,000 women being missing from the state.

“How do I know? Delhi-based enforcement agencies told me,” claimed Mr Kalyan, adding that only 14,000 women managed to return. He demanded answers about the whereabouts of the remaining women.

He also demanded to know whether Chief Minister YS Jagan Mohan Reddy would deal with the issue in the same manner as now, if a woman from his family goes missing.

Further, Mr Kalyan claimed that volunteers have been relaying information from every village to some ruling party leaders as to who belongs to which familu, how many people live in a family, if girls have fallen in love with anyone, how many are widows and so on.

According to Mr Kalyan, some anti-social elements are making use of this information to target widows, who are then trafficked.

Reacting to these allegations, the women's commission chairperson demanded to the know from the actor-politician the number of lonely women handed over to anti-social elements by the volunteers, as per the information purportedly given to him by the Central agencies.

She lashed out at MrKalyan, asking if those agencies had shown him any proof, and wanted to know if he was trying to gain political mileage with these allegedly baseless statements that terrify women.

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