In the news in Delhi for the past two weeks, there has been a great story on an ancient subject. The big story is about a Delhi suburb, a rather poor one called Nithari, where at least 30 children had been missing for a couple of weeks. The parents went to the police, who took details but apparently did nothing, blaming the indifferent parents or dismissing their claims and claiming that the children had left of their own free will.
Angry parents pushed harder and the media picked up the story. Suddenly, there was a huge campaign to find the children, find the killer, bring the police to justice, and most of all, to try to stop the tide of missing children in India.
As you read this, another half a dozen children will have disappeared across the subcontinent. Although Mumbai has earned the dubious honor of being the nation’s capital for child abduction, it happens everywhere. Delhi, purely by virtue of its size, has the highest number: 6,227 a year on average. In total in the six main cities of the subcontinent, the average is 15,674, the population of a small city.
It probably falls short if you look beyond the major metropolitan centers. The latest reliable figures were released in 2005 as part of a major report on the trafficking of women and children in India prepared by Prime Minister Nair, a former CBI officer who now works with the United Nations Development Fund for Women. (UNIFEM). His figures show that 44,476 children were missing in 2005. Of the average of more than 15,000 missing in major cities, Nair found that more than 11,000 were still missing a year later.
The old story is children fading away. The news is that the Indian parents who are the victims are gaining an audience not only in the media, but also in the government.
Pushpa Devi lives in Laxmi Nagar no more than half an hour from Nithari. Like millions across the country, he watched the details unfold as the remains of children were found; limbs, organs, pieces of bone. His daughter, Poonam Lal, disappeared 10 years ago when she was 17 years old. Their mother was told that Poonam had probably eloped with a boyfriend and was therefore not missing. Poonam was eventually tracked down, but her mother knows the pain and it was she and her husband who pushed for a series of dos and don’ts that the Supreme Court presented. The main points are obvious: display mandatory photographic images in public places such as train stations, newspapers and television and at interstate bus stops; doing proper and extensive inquiries between prospects and between states and offering a reward, but it doesn’t happen. The 12-point list accumulates as police forces in all states declare themselves powerless when asked the question: Where have the children gone?
Had they been abducted by aliens, the police could hardly have been more dismissive. While this particular group of unfortunate youth has ended up in backyards and stream beds around Nithari, thousands more end up as cheap labor in roadside shops, prostitutes in a brothel, exploited in the child pornography industry. , kidnapped by the beggars mafia or even trafficked abroad.
It is impossible to obtain accurate statistics. None of the police forces in the various states have any means of compiling their separate databases of information, and even when they do, the details are sparse and often inaccurate. The disappearance of a child is a minor problem for the parents. It will appear or it will not appear. Nothing we can do to help.
Judge AS Anand is a former head of the National Human Rights Commission in India. On the missing children, he says: “Obviously they have not vanished into thin air. The children are our asset and we only talk lip-service about the problem of missing children. Even when a report of a missing child is made to the police. , it is treated as a misdemeanor. ” However, no one in the government seems to know how many children are missing or even very clearly in which folder the problem could fall. The Minister for Child and Women’s Welfare, Renuka Chowdhary, says she is “concerned” about the possibility of another Nithari if urgent action is not taken.
This is where the old and the new stories converge because the truth is that there is no real surprise about the deaths in Nithar, despite all the shock factor. “It’s just a symptom,” says the director of the Central Bureau of Investigation of India (CBI). “Nithari shows the greatest malaise and a failure of the system to respond. There has been a serious failure in all aspects. Nithari happened because the police failed at the first point of delivery of justice, the administration could not give a fair response from then and because society as a whole proved to be insensitive. “
