The Other India: Where Are the Children?
Between January 2008 and October 2010, 13,570 children were reported missing in Delhi. The numbers are based on police reports gathered by a Delhi-based non-profit, Bachpan Bachao Andolan, or the Save the Childhood Movement. Some of the children who were eventually found spoke of being taken by force or of being enticed with promises of food and clothes. But they were then sold into various forms of slavery, including domestic labor, beggary, agricultural labor or commercial sex work.
While statistics on a subject like this can never be entirely accurate, given the nature of the crimes involved, a recent U.S. Department of Labor report said that in India “forced child labor is a problem” practiced in its “worst forms.” A provisional Indian census report released in 2010 estimated that 1 in 10 workers in India are children. Staggering as they appear, experts say these figures may be conservative. Conversations with the parents of missing children reveal that the police are often dismissive of poor families who report a missing child. Almost all of Delhi’s missing children live in slums or unregistered colonies. One parent told by the police, “You can’t feed the dozens of children you produce. Of course they’ll run away!”
Failure to react to reports of missing children has already resulted in tragedy. In 2007, officials found 17 bodies, including those of several children in the sewers behind the home of a wealthy businessman in Noida, a city just east of New Delhi. Residents of a nearby slum, Nithari, had complained about missing children for more than two years, yet, the police took no action. A total of 38 children had gone missing in that case In June this year, 8-year-old Neha, who lives in a village near Kirari, was abducted and taken to Agra where she was locked in a room along with three young boys and a girl. She was told she would be sent to Dubai. Neha was recovered because her abductor, a woman named Kajal who lived close by and whom Neha knew well enough to refer to as “Kajal Aunty,” was brazen enough to return to her neighborhood the next day, possibly to abduct another child. She was recognized as the last person to be seen with Neha, surrounded, and beaten by residents. Although she was arrested and admitted that she abducted children, she was allowed to leave the police station. She hasn’t been seen since.
Shocking and devastating!