New Delhi: Child sex tourism in India has assumed "serious dimensions" because of lack of open protest by citizens and slender chances that the abusers will be caught or punished, according to an NHRC (National Human Rights Commission) report.

While Goa has been the "sex destination" of foreign tourists for a long time, a growing number of cases have been reported from the beaches of Kovalam in Kerala, Puri in Orissa and Digha in West Bengal, an Action Research on Trafficking in Women and Children prepared by National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) with an NGO Institute of Social Sciences (ISS) says.

"In India, the abuse by tourists of both male and female children has assumed serious dimensions. Unlike Sri Lanka and Thailand, this problem has not been seriously tackled or discussed openly and has remained more or less shrouded in secrecy," the report says.

The likelihood of child abusers being caught and punished is low and the silence of the community and its unwillingness to speak out and openly discuss the issue has further complicated the problem.

"In Puri, for example, the local people depend on tourists for survival and so they do not protest, even though they know enough about what is happening," it says.

Ever increasing number of sex offenders from Western countries are shifting their operations to developing countries because of increasing vigilance and action against paedophilia in their own land and the fact that many of these nations are turning a blind eye to the problem with a view to encouraging tourism, the NHRC report notes.