Putting children at risk

For all those of us working with or for children, the Nithari killings are a nightmare come true. As everyone cries foul at the sorry state of the administration that allegedly swallowed fat bribes to let two men go on killing children, larger questions loom over us. 

First, was Nithari avoidable? Yes, say child rights organisations. Simple steps like a designated Child Protection Officer responsible for hearing, registering and taking immediate action on any offence against children would go a long way. After all, children form one-third of India’s population — 414 million to be exact.

Physically and emotionally immature in comparison to adults, and without representation in a democracy, children certainly deserve more than the average protection from our welfare state. A 3.8 per cent rise in the number of criminal cases against children from 2004 to 2005, as recorded by the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB), India, bears out the urgency of the situation. Along with the state, even community-based child protection mechanisms, such as children’s clubs, or panchayats that are extra sensitive to the cause of children, are an important way of preventing such heinous crimes.

Second, how much of this case has to do with class factors? One of the alleged offenders is rich, while all the victims are poor. He could buy off the police, while the parents of the victims could not get a toehold in the system: the police even refused to register their cases. Under immense pressure, the Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Mulayam Singh Yadav finally said, “I admit there was a serious lapse on the part of the police in the Nithari case. The lives of many children could have been saved if the police had lodged complaints and behaved properly with the villagers.”

Compare this case to that of the Adobe India CEO’s kidnapped son, also in Noida, where the police showed remarkable alertness in recovering the child, found fortunately unharmed. A rather uncomfortable question stares us in the face: what if these had been 38 rich kids missing? Would the administration have been able to afford to stifle the case, ignore frantic parents, or the media support that would have rallied around?

Is a poor child more at risk of a heinous crime than a well-to-do one? There is ample evidence that says yes.

In mega-cities like Mumbai, where a huge chunk of the populace lives in slums, and children are born and grow up on the streets, they are often the easiest targets for abusers, easier, in one sense, than even women. Without the security that walls and doors provide, and with parents or caregivers away most of the time to earn their daily living, slum children are perhaps one of the most vulnerable groups of all. Among children, girls are more at risk, as are pre-teen boys.

There are more than 40,000 child sex workers in Maharashtra alone, trafficked from various parts of the country and even from neighbouring countries like Nepal.
Maharashtra also has the dubious distinction of having the largest number of babies killed in the womb: it accounts for 45 per cent of all foeticides reported in India.

Nithari has come as a shock to us because of its scale: 17 children killed, possibly after being sexually abused, and their bodies cannibalised. 38 children have been reported missing from the village in the last two years. But such tragedies are ‘common’ enough, albeit on smaller scales. Pick the city pages of any newspaper and you will, on most days, come across reports of crimes against children: murder, rape, sodomy, trafficking, forced prostitution. Murder and rape form the sensational extremes, but crimes against children occur in ways that are more ‘acceptable’ to society, too. India has more than 12 million child labour, almost all from poor families. Although outlawed, child labour is the commonest crime against children.

Protection mechanisms thus need to factor in the extreme vulnerability of poor children in their plans. This leads to the next question: how many of us know the existing
laws and mechanisms to protect children? We need to know whom to get in touch with, and ask for help.

Finally, for all of us, a simple step is to take what children say — their views and opinions — more seriously. Often, a child is the first one to observe or report possible criminal activities or ‘invisible’ crimes. If adults learn to listen, most problems would be nipped in the bud.

The writer is Assistant Professor, Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai, and has worked on child rights.