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The serial killing of children at Nithari
village in Noda, U.P. shocked the nation. The serial killings of
children in Noida revealed a "butcher-like precision" in the
chopping of 17 bodies, of which 11 have been identified
as that of girls, top doctors of the government hosptial here said.
This heinous and gory crimes, reflects the serious fault-lines in
all aspects of our society, from our police to administration to
politics to media, and of course the individual. These fault-lines
spread from the apathy of not just the police and the administration
but also the media towards the poor and the deprived sections of the
society. Moninder Singh Pandher and his servant Surender, the two
suspects of this ghastly serial crime, were finally caught when Nand
Lal persisted with the matter in a court after the Noida police
refused to register his daughter's disappearance.
The entire horrifying episode reeks of police
apathy towards the poor. They have refused to entertain complaints
of missing children and women. Not only that, they have demanded
money up to Rs.10, 000 to register a complaint. One father even
admitted that he had paid the amount. And yet they had ignored the complaints.
The National Human Rights Organisation's reports states that as many as 45,000 children go
missing in India every year. This is shocking even for a country
that almost takes pride in being fatalistic. If anything, the report
has brought to the fore the unpalatable truth that we simply don't
care much about our own children. This makes a monkey of India being
a signatory to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.
The Indian Government has for years now, paid lip services to
the need to protect its children. Yet violations of children's
rights are horrifying widespread. According to Human Rights Watch,
India is home of largest child workforce in the world, many of
whom are bonded labourers. Literacy and school enrolment,
especially of girl child, is low. Worse, trafficking of children,
for industrial labour and for sexual exploitation, is a serious
problem to which authorities largely turn a blind eye. The thread
running through all these tragic real-life tales is that a vast
majority of the victims come from disadvantaged backgrounds, and
thus receive little attention or help. The difference in approach by
Noida police to the abduction of Adobe CEO Naresh Gupta's son and to
the disappearance of 38 children from Nithari village in the same
area shows a nation's instinctive response to the socio-economic
background of the complaint. The child-trafficking is our most
prevalent in states like Chhattisgarh, Orissa and Bihar; which are
low on the social and economic index, is again no coincidence at
all.
With poverty, social exclusion and discrimination playing
such a huge role in the country's failure to protect its children,
obviously a solution to the problem need to be multilayerd. But the
immediate - in excusable - failure has been that of the police.
This, yet again, points to the urgent need for reforms that will
make those responsible for the protection of our citizens -
regardless of their socio-economic status in society - more
accountable to the people.
While the entire sordid episode is yet to unravel fully, what have
however been unmasked in all their ugly glory are the failings of
the individual as well as the society and how deep these fault lines
lie.
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