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The kidnap alarm: What is the government doing?

Mumbai has the second highest crime ratio against children in the country and the unsolved cases have raised fears about the missing babies falling prey to the begging mafia or gangs involved in child trafficking

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Yet another child was kidnapped last month from Wadia hospital, raking up past incidents. Mumbai has the second highest crime ratio against children in the country and the unsolved cases have raised fears about the missing babies falling prey to the begging mafia or gangs involved in child trafficking. As parents wait in hope, Rajendra B Aklekar and Sunchika B Pandey track what the government is doing to curb such crimes.

June 10:A three-year-old girl was kidnapped by a man from Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus (CST) while her family was asleep. The CCTV footage showed how the man first wandered around the station’s waiting room, came in, spotted his target, waited for a few seconds and simply walked away with the child. The entire process took 40 seconds. A month later, the girl was rescued from Haridwar, more than 1,300 km away from Mumbai

October 8:A woman in a red sari is seen sitting beside a 10-month child sleeping next to his grandmother at CST . She played with him for a while and after the grandmother fell asleep, the CCTV footage shows the woman pick up the child and move towards the station’s exit.

October 24:A day-old boy was stolen from Wadia Hospital while the mother had left the baby unattended in the ward. The hospital does not have a CCTV camera. Eyewitnesses said they saw a sari-clad woman, aged around 25, leave the room with the child.

Salim, Jamal and Latika, the characters in Danny Boyle’s award-winning movie Slumdog Millionaire, manage to flee Maman, the gangster who tricks and trains street children and forces them to beg by blinding them.

Parents, who have lost their child, hope and pray that their child is safe and has not landed in the clutches of criminals. “We will wait for our son till our last breath. Everyone lives on hope and our only hope is to find our son,” says Chembur resident Mohan Nerurkar, whose three-day-old son was kidnapped from Sion hospital on January 1, 2009.

Prakash Chauhan, 32, and his wife Vidya, 29, too, have not lost hope. For the last 10 years, they have been celebrating their child’s birthday on January 12. The couple lost their baby boy two days after he was born at JJ Hospital in 2003. The child went missing from the maternity ward and though a police complaint was filed, nothing came of it. The couple, who lives in Dongri with their two children, is hopeful that one day they will find their child.

The recent kidnap of a baby boy from Parel’s Wadia hospital has left another family distraught.  “I came here to give birth to my baby and we are not leaving the hospital without him. The hospital management is responsible for my child being stolen,” said Jasmine Naik, the distraught mother of the kidnapped child.

The delay in finding the child poses problems for the police because it gets difficult to trace infants as they don’t look the same with the passing of time. Forget the police, even parents won’t be able to recognise their child.

“It is certainly a big challenge to identify a lost child. However, in case there is any doubt about the identity of a baby, we can always get a DNA test done,” said Vikram Patil, senior inspector of Bhoiwada police station who is investigating the Wadia baby kidnap case.

“After the girl kidnapped from CST was found in Haridwar, it indicates that there are national child abduction gangs operating in Mumbai. Most of the kidnapped children are either forced to beg or sold off to those seeking to adopt a child,” said a senior child counsellor.

“The rules of adoption are so strict that many prefer to buy such children without any responsibility. If they do not find the child as per their expectations, they simply abandon it,” he added.

Mumbai high in crimes against kids
The latest report of the National Crime Records Bureau states that over 60,000 children go missing every year in India --- that’s one child every eight minutes or seven every hour. Of these, on an average more than 22,000 are not found. Most of these children are abducted by gangs involved in trafficking. According to the National Crime Records Bureau, over two lakh children are listed as missing in India.

Mumbai ranks the second highest — Delhi tops the list — in the statistics chart of the rate of crime committed against children. “Crimes against children, not only kidnapping, in Mumbai constitute 5.4% in the all-India total,” a senior official said.

The Children in India-2012 report released by the Social Statistics Division of the Union Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation states that in 2011, among the crimes under the Indian Penal Code, a 43% increase in kidnapping and abduction cases was registered across the country. Another shocking statistics was an increase in child rape cases.

The report stated that Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh and Maharashtra together account for 44.5% of child rape cases reported in the country in 2011. Even with the prevailing perception of underreporting in crime data, it is alarming to note that a total of 15,282 cases of kidnapping and abduction of children were reported during 2011 as compared to 10,670 cases in the previous year.

Begging mafia
Raju, who kidnapped the girl at CST and was nabbed in Haridwar, told the police that he had committed the crime to use the child for begging.

“Begging earns a lot of money as people sympathise with children and give them alms. This trend encourages begging and the mafia,” said Akanksha Jain, a child counsellor.

The beggar mafia is a huge industry. The police said that pilgrimage places like Haridwar boost the begging mafia and mostly kidnapped children are forced to beg there.

“Children abandoned by their families who can’t take care of them because of poverty or those who run away from home usually fall into the trap of the mafia,” said Jain. “Many are forced to beg and girls pushed into prostitution.”

What are the authorities doing?
The Union Ministry of Home Affairs recently issued an advisory on missing children in which the states and union territories have been advised on measures needed to prevent trafficking and take steps to trace children. These include computerisation of records, DNA profiling, involvement of NGOs and other organisations and community awareness programmes to facilitate tracing of missing children.

In a separate detailed advisory, the Centre has advised all states and union territories to ensure steps to improve safety in schools/institutions, public transport used by students, parks/play grounds and residential localities and roads.

It has also been advised that the crime-prone areas should be identified and a mechanism put in place to monitor infractions in such areas for ensuring the safety and security of students, especially girls. But these advisories remain only on paper. 

“The increased patrolling and alertness by the police does not help much. It is the parent or the guardian who has to be more careful and keep a tab on his/her child,” Jain added.

What you can do

  • Never leave your child alone at a public place.
  • Counsel your child on the subject.
  • Listen to your child if he/she has any complaint or talks of some one persistently stalking or talking to him.
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