India slowly confronts epidemic of missing children

?It was living hell these past two years, trying to figure out where we could find him,? said his father, Iqbal Ali. ?I used to run a biscuit bakery, but from the day he disappeared, I got so caught up trying to meet politicians, police and people who claim to do magic to get children back, that I had to shut down my bakery. I had no time for it.?

More than 90,000 children are officially reported missing every year, according to data compiled and released late last year by leading children?s rights group Bachpan Bachao Andolan, which showed the problem was far greater than previously thought.

Up to 10 times that number are trafficked, according to the group ? boys and girls, most from poor families, torn from their parents, sometimes in return for cash, and forced to beg or work in farms, factories and homes, or sold for sex and marriage.

It is an epidemic that, until a few years ago, remained unreported and largely ignored by the authorities.

But years of tireless work by activists, a few crucial victories in court ? and the shocking discovery of the bones of 17 slain girls and young women around a businessman?s home in a suburb of New Delhi called Nithari in 2006 ? have gradually put the issue on the nation?s agenda.

India?s 24-hour news channels have also played a role in highlighting an issue long tolerated by the country?s middle classes. The media frenzy surrounding the Nithari killings was a watershed, reminiscent of the way the disappearance of Etan Patz in Manhattan in 1979 helped spark the missing-children?s movement in the United States.

In recent weeks, footage from surveillance cameras ? a new phenomenon in modern India ? has also been repeatedly broadcast on television here, showing infants being brazenly snatched from train stations and hospital lobbies as parents slept nearby.

?A couple of decades ago, there was no understanding of the issue of missing children or trafficking for forced labor ? child labor was not even considered a crime,? said Bhuwan Ribhu, an activist for the children?s rights group. ?Though things are slowly changing, the biggest issue is the lack of political and administrative will to enforce the law, which is often outside the reach of the common person.?

Irfan suffered perhaps the most common fate ? kidnapped to satisfy India?s insatiable demand for cheap, agricultural labor.

In India and many other developing countries, children often work in agriculture. What is only now becoming apparent is the huge trafficking industry that has grown up outside the law.

Irfan?s story, though, has a happy ending. Last month, after more than two years away, he finally made it home to his joyous parents, after climbing on a chair in the shed where he was held and breaking a window with an earthen vase to escape.

?I was supposed to bathe the buffalo, to feed them, to pick up the dung,? he said, describing his life imprisoned in virtual solitary confinement in a room adjoining a buffalo shed outside the town of Mullanpur, some 200 miles northwest of Delhi.

Source: http://feeds.washingtonpost.com/click.phdo?i=ce472aa778bf3cac254eb827e195d083

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