NEWS ON SHAKTI VAHINI

Activists, NGOs root for stronger laws

Posted in ANTI TRAFFICKING, FIGHT SLAVERY, JUVENILE JUSTICE, SHAKTI VAHINI by NNLRJ INDIA on July 26, 2012
Activists, NGOs root for stronger laws

Activists, NGOs root for stronger laws

MALLICA JOSHI IN THE HINDUSTAN TIMES

As voices centred on trafficking crimes are slowly becoming louder and questions marks over the lack of regulation of placement agencies being raised increasingly, the pressure on the Delhi government to come up with a regulatory law has increased. According to experts, however, Delhi government’s draft Delhi Private Placement Agencies (Regulation) Bill, 2012 leaves a lot to be desired.   “The draft Bill provides for no welfare mechanism for domestic helps nor does it stipulate minimum wages. It also does not talk of a monitoring mechanism in procurement areas. These are key areas which are central to the problem of trafficking and also to the betterment of the domestic helps,” said Rishi Kant, member, Shakti Vahini, an NGO working against child trafficking.

The draft Delhi Private Placement Agencies (Regulation) Bill, 2012, would be placed before the assembly in February 2013.

“The draft Bill has not clearly spelt out the rights of the domestic helps. It also does not seek to set up a mechanism whereby domestic workers can lodge complaint of sexual harassment/sexual assault by placement agents,” Kant added. Woman and child department of Delhi government is now planning to bring a new legislation to rein in trafficking of minors, especially girls, and women. “We are working on a separate law,” said Delhi social welfare minister Kiran Walia.

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Kept as slaves, minors are shown no mercy

Posted in ANTI TRAFFICKING, CHILD RIGHTS, FIGHT SLAVERY, JUVENILE JUSTICE, SHAKTI VAHINI by NNLRJ INDIA on July 25, 2012

Kept as slaves, minors are shown no mercy

MALLICA JOSHI IN THE HINDUSTAN TIMES

Stuti (name changed) would wake up at 5 every day to sweep, wash and dust the entire house, cook breakfast and pack lunch for the family of five and then go and drop the kids to the bus stop. But she is not the mother of these children; neither is she their caretaker.

Working at the home of a MNC executive, she was made to work at least 12-14 hours daily, given only two meals and beaten up badly if she made a ‘mistake’. When she was rescued at the instance of a neighbour who could not bear to see her regular trauma, she was found to be malnourished and scared.

But Stuti’s is not alone. Megha (name changed), 13, ran away from her employer’s house to be found by a policeman on the streets in Kalkaji. She had run away from a doctor’s house with a swollen ear, scratches on her face and bruises all over her body. The doctor’s wife, she said, hit her every day.

HOW YOU CAN HELPThere are thousands of minor domestic helps working in the homes of upper middle and middle class Indians who are meted out the same treatment daily. Child Welfare Committees, NGOs and police have rescued close to 200 minor domestic maids in the past six months.

Most tip-offs have been given by neighbours because these maids are regularly beaten up. “I was once hit with a ‘tawa’ because I broke a glass jar by mistake,” Stuti said.

Stuti came to Delhi as a nine-year-old from West Bengal. Her mother worked for the family’s parents in their ancestral village and her mother thought she would be in safe hands. “The working middle class is fuelling the child domestic help sector. We think that we are doing the girl and her family a favour by employing her. What we fail to understand is that this girl should be in a school instead of doing work that even a full-grown man would find daunting. Unless a girl is beaten up badly, no one complains,” said Rajasebastian Robertson, who runs a shelter home called Global Family and is currently taking care of Stuti.

“Employing a young boy or girl is not considered a crime. Unless this attitude changes, girls will continue to be trafficked and tortured,” he added.

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Placement agencies or exploitation hubs?

Posted in ANTI TRAFFICKING, CHILD RIGHTS, FIGHT SLAVERY, JUVENILE JUSTICE, SHAKTI VAHINI by NNLRJ INDIA on April 22, 2012

NDTV 24X7

Placement agencies have mushroomed over the past five years in Delhi, providing domestic helps to NCR families. But almost ninety per cent of these agencies are unregulated, and become the not registered, and become the first point of exploitation for girls brought from other parts of the country to the capital.

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Raped maid rescued in Gurgaon

Posted in ANTI TRAFFICKING, CHILD RIGHTS, FIGHT SLAVERY, JUVENILE JUSTICE, SHAKTI VAHINI, VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN by NNLRJ INDIA on April 20, 2012

IANS NEWS

A minor girl working as a domestic help raped by two men on several occasions was rescued Thursday from Sushant Lok area in Gurgaon by activists of NGO Shakti Vahini, police said. One of the accused, a driver, was arrested. The 16-year-old girl from Punjab, employed at school teacher Nansy Singh’s house, said in her complaint that she was last raped a week ago, police said.

She was raped by 24-year-old driver Sandeep and another man living in the same neighbourhood. Sandeep was arrested. District child protection officer and Sahkti Vahini’s executive director Nishikant recommended to police to file a case for rape and under the Juvenile Justice Act, a police official said.

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The NewSlaves

Posted in ANTI TRAFFICKING, FIGHT SLAVERY, JUVENILE JUSTICE, SHAKTI VAHINI, VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN by NNLRJ INDIA on April 18, 2012
The New Slaves

The New Slaves

Debarshi Dasgupta in The Outlook

In  her nine years as a nurse working with rescued domestic workers in Delhi, Mariamma K. thought she had seen the worst. That was until 2010, when she and her colleagues went to rescue a 17-year-old girl from a home in west Delhi. Sangeeta was found with bite marks all over her body. “We were completely shocked. We didn’t know if we were looking at an animal or a human,” recollects Mariamma, who works with Nirmala Niketan, a group fighting for the rights of house-helps.

Her employers initially claimed, quite incredulously, that she was biting herself but that didn’t explain the marks on her neck. They then changed tack—the lady of the house was deemed unstable. “But we didn’t buy that either. Why did she bite only her help and not her children?” argues Mariamma. The matter was later “settled” out of court. The girl’s family got Rs 50,000, after which she was sent back home to Assam.

Mariamma may still be able to recount the worst case of abuse she’s ever seen, but it’s not that easy for volunteers at Delhi’s Domestic Workers’ Forum. For it could be Veena from February last year, whose employer literally chose to dig in her heels—rather, her stilettos—into her back. Or what about Shobha, a 15-year-old from Jharkhand, whose employer, a nurse, branded her chest with a hot iron? Or Hasina from West Bengal, a minor salvaged from a bureaucrat’s house in November last year, whose private parts had been repeatedly prodded with a rolling pin?

Now the picture may look particularly grim in the national capital (the latest case, from last month, is of a tortured 13-year-old Jharkhand girl, locked in by a vacationing doctor couple with frugal rations) but the truth is, across the country, particularly in north India (see list), abuse of domestic helps is on the rise. What has brought about this pattern of deliberate brutality? Is it because the affluent in cities find a deluge of workers in a market that has no checks against their exploitation? Is it the poor, rather negligible conviction rate, the money-conquers-all attitude which has emboldened this cruel streak in city-dwellers? (The latter perhaps is a valid thought; even as they were being charged, the aforementioned doctor couple had the audacity to publicly offer Rs 75,000 to settle the case.)

This is especially true of a nouveau riche middle class who seem to have no empathy with the poor. In fact “most think that by employing a maid, they are doing some service…feeding the poor. There is a lot of aggression, anger among these people”, says social worker Rishi Kant  of Shakti Vahini who has helped rescue many such girls. “At some houses, the employers actually ask us why we are taking them away when they are at least being fed there….”

Another activist, Rakesh Senger, adds “They think they are doing these kids a favour if they pay them Rs 1,000 a month, give them second-hand clothes and feed them scraps.”

Given the recent flare-ups and the outrage (at least in the media), it is a relationship that many now openly characterise as that between a modern master and slave. These are reflected even in minute dealings with the help. Take, for example, the case of Namita Haldar in Calcutta, who works in several homes but is not allowed to use the toilet facilities in any of them. “It doesn’t occur to us to treat them like humans because it is deep-rooted in our psyche to somehow consider them less than human. Just because we are paying them, people think they should get their money’s worth, right down to the last penny,” says Kakuli Deb of Parichiti, a city-based rights group.

Most of this subjugated workforce, of an estimated 90 million domestic workers in the country, comes from impoverished regions in states like Jharkhand, Bengal and Chhattisgarh. It’s no surprise that a substantial number of them are trafficked into big cities to spruce up urban homes, smoothen out the harried lives of city-dwellers. West Bengal alone reported as many as 8,000 missing girls in 2010 and 2011. Hapless girls from the tribal regions are especially in demand, says Sanjay K. Mishra, who helps rehabilitate rescued domestic workers. “They are simple and innocent and, crucially, without a support structure. So abuse is rarely reported.” Often the parents have no idea where the girls have been taken by agencies and, being illiterate, they are open to all sorts of exploitation.

Feeding on this vast market are the numerous, obscure ‘placement agencies’ (some 2,300 in Delhi alone). Employers pay these agencies to hire a help and, in most cases, pay the monthly salary also to the agency instead of the worker.

And while child labour may have a stigma attached, even today most people tend to look the other way. In Calcutta, Mukul Das, who runs a small business in busy Gariahat, says “maid children” are more “obedient”. His last one, 8-year-old Shefali, would clean, sweep, cook and then sleep on the floor. It was apparently a great bargain. Last year, 116 ‘workers’ were rescued from middle-class homes in Delhi; only four of them were over 18. A survey in Mumbai two years back found nearly 60,000 girls between 5-14 employed as domestic workers.

Now there’s a common rationalisation, more so among this very same middle class, that at least these kids are being fed and clothed, that they are lucky to not find themselves in a brothel. But that’s no guarantee that they won’t end up being sexually abused by their employers. Like Chandni, now 18, who says she was raped in Amritsar by her employer’s father-in-law and then raped again by a man in Delhi who promised to help. Recalling her woes, she says she couldn’t even call people back home. “The landline would be locked away when they went out. They would hit me with shoes and I never got a rupee for all my work,” she says. Madhuri Singh, a Delhi journalist who came to report on her case, now employs her. Madhuri explains that the middle class exploits these young girls because they are “voiceless”. “The employers know that it is their voice that is heard among the decision-makers, not the worker’s.”

Ironically, even those in positions to make the lives of workers better are not above inflicting abuse. Recounting one such case, the head of the Andhra chapter of the National Domestic Workers Movement describes how two children were tortured at a retired dig’s home in Hyderabad. The girls, aged 14 and 15, were employed to look after the retired cop’s grandchild. Once when the child was found wandering close to the swimming pool, the dig punished the maids by making them stand neck-deep in the pool an entire night. “When the children managed to escape from the house, the officer filed a case accusing the girls of stealing jewellery. Investigations instead revealed that the girls were physically tortured.”

A major problem with the domestic worker market is the scarce information agencies provide of workers that makes exploitation easier. “Every agency should give a full record of the help they provide. Is she a goat or a showpiece that you can just buy and keep in your home? And if you do employ one, why should it not be recorded somewhere?” asks Subhash Bhatnagar, coordinator of the National Campaign Committee for Unorganised Sector Workers.

While a draft bill to protect the rights of domestic workers was ready as far back as 2008, it’s still lying with the National Commission for Women (NCW). “It’s going to take a long time before it gets enacted into law…many of the decision-makers themselves depend on domestic workers. I won’t be surprised if some of them even employ child workers,” says Bharti Sharma, ex-chairperson of the Delhi Child Welfare Committee.

Similarly, legislation in states too has been stuck. Clara, coordinator of the Tamil Nadu Domestic Workers’ Union, says she had lobbied with a DMK minister in 2007 to fix Rs 30 per hour as minimum wages, but the decision was postponed. “Early last year, the minister told me the decision was further delayed since elections were approaching and the government did not want to antagonise the employers.” Union representatives who met the labour secretary in March were informed that the “issue is under process”. Everyone knows that legislation can take its time but that hardly permits middle-class homes from being zones of inequity and oppression in a free and independent India.

(Names have been changed in most cases to protect privacy)

The Organ Grinders

2004 A 14-year-old girl, working as a help in one of Calcutta’s Golpark homes, is found hanging. Police report it as a case of suicide despite accusations of sexual abuse.

June 2009 Actor Shiney Ahuja allegedly rapes his maid in Mumbai, is later arrested. Granted bail in April 2011.

August 2009 Actress Urvashi Dhanorkar’s 10-year-old maid is rescued with burn injuries on forearms and bruise marks all over.

September 2011 A 12-year-old girl is found charred to death at her employer’s home in Kurnool, AP. Rape allegations follow.

December 2011 A Chennai woman is convicted and fined Rs 50,000 for burning her help in 2008 after she failed to pay back a loan of Rs 15,000.

March 2012 An Indian maid receives a favourable ruling from a New York court, awarded $1.5 mn as compensation after she accused her former employer Neena Malhotra (right), an IFS officer, and her husband of harassment and “slavery”.

March 2012 A 13-year-old girl is rescued from Dwarka, Delhi. Her employers, Drs Sanjay and Sunita Verma, left her locked up while they went off on a vacation to Thailand. She is found with injury marks, including those inflicted by pinching, all over her body. She was apparently surviving on a diet of two rotis and salt.

April 2012 Teenaged domestic help from Bihar raped and physically abused by employer’s children, Nadeem and Fardeen, for over two years. The young girl had burn marks on her hands. Fardeen arrested.

Debarshi Dasgupta in The Outlook

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All work, no play

Posted in ANTI TRAFFICKING, FIGHT SLAVERY, JUVENILE JUSTICE, SHAKTI VAHINI by NNLRJ INDIA on April 14, 2012
Dr. Couple Arrested For Locking Up A Teen

Dr. Couple Arrested For Locking Up A Teen

Employing children as domestics is illegal. Yet, this is one law that is broken with impunity again and again.

By Kalpana Sharma IN THE HINDU

What a way to begin the week after the long Easter weekend. First, we got the news about baby Afreen in Bengaluru, whose father has allegedly beaten her to death. He did this apparently because he wanted a son and was mad at this wife for producing a girl. Then in a village near Jalgaon, Maharashtra, a 19-year-old girl was strangled to death. The chief suspects are her father, uncle and grandmother. The reason: she was in love with a boy from another caste. And in Mumbai, the police arrested a 20-year-old man who was trying to abduct two minor girls.

But distressing as these reports are, the news from Delhi the previous week of the 13-year-old domestic left locked in a flat by her employers who went off to Bangkok is even more chilling. The facts of that case are now well known and even the international media has reported them. The couple, both medical doctors, have been arrested and charged under various provisions of the Juvenile Justice Act, the Bonded Labour System (Abolition) Act, the Child Labour (Prohibition & Regulation) Act and the Indian Penal Code. The girl, rescued by the fire brigade when neighbours reported seeing her on the balcony crying, has now been taken to a shelter. And the man who brought her to Delhi from Jharkhand has also been arrested.

Subterranean cities

This story, however, does not end here. It is the beginning of another story, one that gives us a glimpse into a nether-world, one where children are kidnapped, stolen or sold into servitude from some of the poorest parts of India; a world where these children have no choice, no voice. When we think of trafficking, we usually think of the sex trade. In fact, many children are trafficked into domestic and other forms of labour and are never detected.

The story of the 13-year-old girl in Delhi is not an exception. Every now and then similar stories are reported in the media. In Mumbai, we still remember the horrific tale of 10-year-old Sonu who was tortured by her employers and eventually died from the injuries.

But there are two aspects of this story that are particularly worrying: indifference and impunity. Let us take the latter first. In October 2006, the government included domestic work in the Child Labour Act. Earlier, children under 14 years were prohibited from working in a number of hazardous industries that were identified. After 2006, the law banned children from being employed as domestics or to work in dhabas and restaurants. Yet, many like the educated professional couple in this case, think nothing of breaking this law.

Usually, when people like them are asked why they employ children, they come out with a set of standard excuses: “We were looking after the child as if she was our own”. “We were feeding and clothing her, something she would not get in her village”. “She is like a member of our family”, etc. But the point is that they are breaking the law. And with impunity. The fact that so many affluent and middle class people do this is because they are confident that the law applies to others, not to people like them. In fact, they firmly believe that most laws apply to others, not to them.

Unacceptable numbers

Data is not easily available on this issue but roughly 20 per cent of the 12.6 million child workers in India (these are official figures and therefore a gross underestimation) are domestic workers. Of these, the majority are boys. But girls too work as domestics and are particularly vulnerable to sexual abuse. Both boys and girls suffer various levels of physical abuse.

The other side of impunity is indifference. How many of us turn our faces away when we see a woman being harassed, a child being beaten, a law being flouted? No one wants to be involved. I wonder how many people in the housing colony where this couple lived were aware that a child was working in that house? What stopped any of these people from reporting this to Childline, which has a well-advertised number (1098) that anyone can call and an email address where a complaint can be sent?

We are not helping any children, including our own, if we justify employing children to work in our homes. We are flouting not just the child labour laws but also the constitutional provision that gives every child the right to compulsory and free education. Sadly, in India, being educated and part of the better-off class does not necessarily add up to enlightened attitudes. As with dowry, the more we learn, the more we earn, the more we slip back in our attitudes.

sharma.kalpana@yahoo.com

By Kalpana Sharma IN THE HINDU

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Tired of being abused, child helps run away

Posted in ANTI TRAFFICKING, CHILD RIGHTS, FIGHT SLAVERY, JUVENILE JUSTICE, SHAKTI VAHINI by NNLRJ INDIA on April 5, 2012

CHILD LABOUR IN DELHI

CHILD LABOUR IN DELHI

FAIZAN HAIDAR IN THE HINDUSTAN TIMES

Kirti Nagar: A 13-year-old domestic worker is rescued from the residence of a doctor. When the police went to his residence, he asked them to take her ‘in a couple of days so that they can get another maid’.

March 29, Dwarka: A 13-year-old domestic worker found locked in the house of a doctor couple who went on a vacation to Bangkok.

April 2, Vasant Kunj: A 12-year-old boy is rescued from the house of a businessman, who was accused of physically abusing the kid.

Behind the high walls of the rich and the powerful, horror stories of abuse of child domestic workers are abound.

Out of the hundreds of child labourers rescued in the city every month, eight to nine are child domestic workers, according to figures provided by the Child Welfare Committees (CWC) in the city. Rescued from homes of the affluent who can afford to employ domestic workers and pay between R20,000 and R30,000 for nine months in addition to a meagre salary to the placement agencies, these children usually run away from the employers’ homes before being rescued by NGOs or the police.

According to the police, the Delhi-based placement agencies have their agents in states such as West Bengal, Jharkhand, Bihar and Assam, who bring minors between the age group of 10 and 16 and sell them to placement agencies for R10,000. “Most of the children that are produced before us are runaways. They are tired of the work and the verbal and physical abuse. Between January and March this year, we rescued 12 children from domestic child labour. In just two of these cases, the complaints were received from neighbours,” said Raajmangal Prasad, chairperson, CWC, Lajpat Nagar.

The figures, the NGOs and CWCs say, are not even the tip of the iceberg. Hundreds of cases of child domestic worker abuse go unnoticed because people do not file complaints against their own neighbours. “Ninety per cent of these cases go unreported. People think ill-treatment of domestic help is a family’s personal matter. The premium placed on privacy these days is actually aiding the rise of such cases,” said Nishi Kant, executive director, Shakti Vahini, an NGO working for child rights.

“My neighbour had employed a young girl (12) as a domestic maid in his house. She was confined to the balcony after completing housework and was forced to dress, sleep and eat there. I called the CWC but was dissuaded by other neighbours. No one was ready to confront him,” said Poorva Garg, a resident of Malviya Nagar, who finally filed an anonymous complaint.

Even the law is skewed against these children, especially those between the ages of 12 and 18. While the law bans child labour till the age of 14, there is no law for children up to the age of 18. “It is very difficult to look at a child and determine her or his age. And even if the age is determined, how mature and physically fit is a kid aged 14 years 1 month compared to a kid aged 13 years 9 months?

The Juvenile Justice Act, 2009, recognises children below the age of 18 as a child, the labour law does not. The law is unfair to them,” said Mitali Bhargava, a psychologist who works with victims of child abuse.

FAIZAN HAIDAR IN THE HINDUSTAN TIMES

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Rising demand for helps has led to increase in trafficking of girls

Posted in ANTI TRAFFICKING, CHILD RIGHTS, FIGHT SLAVERY, JUVENILE JUSTICE, SEX ABUSE, SHAKTI VAHINI by NNLRJ INDIA on March 31, 2012
Rising demand for helps has led to increase in trafficking of girls

Rising demand for helps has led to increase in trafficking of girls

HINDUSTAN TIMES

NEW DELHI: The rescue of the 13year-old girl working as a domestic help, has once again highlighted the increasing incidents of trafficking of minor girls to be employed as domestic helps. In this case too, the victim was brought to Delhi from Gumla district in Jharkhand by her uncle’s friend.

“I was brought to Delhi by one Mahadev, who knew my uncle Narayan Sahu. Mahadev handed me over to one Mukesh, owner of a placement agency in Punjabi Bagh. Mukesh asked me to work at a flat in Dwarka,” the victim said in her statement. Police said the trafficking of minor girls had increased since there was a huge demand for domestic helps in Delhi and the NCR. Organised gangs bring minors from Jharkhand and West Bengal and later sell them to placement agencies in Delhi, the police said. There are 2,300 placement agencies in Delhi out of which 325 are registered under the Commercial Establishment Act.

This registration is not mandatory, so not many get themselves registered. “A number of these placement agencies are in Shakurpur in northwest Delhi,” a senior police officer said. Officials of Delhi government’s labour department said that more than 1,000 juveniles — both boys and girls — are rescued from different areas working in different occupations by the government’s task force every year. And the number is only increasing.

“There is an increase in the number every year because there is greater awareness among people that kids should not work and such people inform the police and other departments if they come across such a case. Also, our list now incudes more occupations, in which juveniles are prohibited, and hence our catchment area has increased,” a senior labour department official said.

The official said that each district in Delhi had a task force.

“Kids who are rescued are rehabilitated and repatriated to the home district,” the officer said.“but the unfortunate part is that parents send their kids to work due to their poor financial condition. There have been innumerable examples where parents have sent them back to work again,” the official added.

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DOMESTIC HELP LOCKED INSIDE FLAT

Posted in ANTI TRAFFICKING, CHILD RIGHTS, FIGHT SLAVERY, SEX ABUSE, SHAKTI VAHINI by NNLRJ INDIA on March 30, 2012
DOMESTIC HELP LOCKED INSIDE FLAT

DOMESTIC HELP LOCKED INSIDE FLAT

PUBLISHED IN THE HINDU

A 13-year-old domestic help who was allegedly tortured and kept in confinement by a doctor couple in their house at Sector 6 of Dwarka here was rescued by a non-government organisation on Thursday. The area Sub-Divisional Magistrate has initiated an inquiry into the matter.

The victim, who belongs to Gumla in Jharkhand, had been working at the residence of the doctor couple for the past one year. “She was recruited through one Mukesh Kumar, who runs a placement agency. About a week ago, the couple left for Thailand along with their daughter. They locked up the girl inside the house at Hahna Apartments,” said Nishi Kant of NGO Shakti Vahini.

The matter came to light when a domestic help working in the area saw the victim and learnt that she had been kept in confinement for the past six days. The case was brought to the notice of Shakti Vahini, following which a rescue team was sent to the spot. The team members called up the Delhi Fire Service after they failed to break open the lock.

Injury marks

“The fire officials broke into the house and rescued the girl who had injuries, including nail marks, all over her body. She disclosed that she had not eaten for the past three days. We gave her some juice and took her to a nearby hospital for medical examination. The victim disclosed that her employers used to torture her over minor issues. They had installed cameras inside the house to keep a track of her activities. It appears that she was not being paid any salary,” said Mr. Kant.

After the alleged torture of a minor girl by her employers was brought to the notice of the area SDM, he ordered an inquiry. “The employers will be contacted once they are back,” said an official.

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India’s Child Savers: The Making of…

Posted in FIGHT SLAVERY, GENDER, SHAKTI VAHINI, VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN by NNLRJ INDIA on November 18, 2011

CHANNEL -4 UK

Friday 18 November 2011 / Evan Williams

“I just want my daughter back, I just want my daughter back,” said 40-year-old Sunabhamu Begam as we sped across the Indian countryside towards the village just outside Delhi where her 16-year-old daughter, Mahinda, was held captive.

After going missing five months ago, Mahinda managed to get one phone call through to her parents. She gave them a rough description of what she could see – a large body of water and a chemists shop. Before hanging up she hurriedly ended with the words “Please Help Me”.

When Sunabhamu and her husband Chandan went to the police, they say they were asked for money before a complaint could be lodged and an investigation started. They didn’t have that money. Eventually they heard about Rishi Kant who runs an NGO in Delhi that does what the police should be doing – rescuing children. It was Rishi who finally got the police to trace the location of the number and pushed the police in this area to join the raid.

We have heard about child disappearances in India. But what caught my attention was the sheer scale. It is staggering. According to the government’s own figures up to 60,000 children go missing in India every year. Seven children a day are snatched and many are trafficked into bonded labour, prostitution, forced begging even selling drugs. If they are paid it’s a pittance, they are denied their freedom, made to work long hours and often abused. They are lost souls.

Bhuwan Ribhu, who runs an organization called Save the Childhood Movement, told us of the 117,000 children who went missing in the past two years. 41,000 remain untraced.

 This is from official figures. In the first attempt to work out the real number of missing children in India, Bhuwan has collated figures from his group’s work in rescuing large numbers of children. He believes the number of children going missing each year could be ten times higher. “Of the 1000 children we rescued in 2010 more than 900 would be construed as missing, most parents did not know where they were,” he said. They had not been listed as missing in any official figures, “So the real figure could be hundreds of thousands (of kidnapped children) – even more than a million – very year”. The Indian Government agrees there is a problem and recently set up anti-trafficking units across India.

Why so many? Well Bhuwan has worked out that because of the slave-like conditions, child labour could be worth millions of pounds each year to the Indian economy.

The booming economy has also sparked a boom in a newer form of exploitation involving the rapidly growing middle class. Tens of thousands of young girls and boys under 18 are being trafficked from rural villages to the cities such as Delhi to work as maids and domestic servants for young professional families who find they need help to run their homes and look after their children.

On one rescue with Rishi we found a 12 year old girl who had just been trafficked in to Delhi. In the same house he found five young boys around the ages of 12 and 14 also about to be sent out as domestic servants.

And there is a new terror stalking the shopping malls and streets of Delhi’s new satellite cities. New Wealth has created a new phenomenon of children being kidnapped for ransom.

Out of the many unsettling moments we witnessed, nothing prepares you for looking into the eyes of a parent with a missing child, especially one who has been taken for ransom and who has not been seen for weeks or months.

They obviously still live in hope that at any moment their child could return. But in their eyes is a terrible haunting helplessness that is simply heartbreaking.

This article relates to India’s Child Savers

http://www.channel4.com/programmes/unreported-world/articles/indias-child-savers-the-making-of

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