Child Trafficking
Cheats, gullible parents, innocent victims
- Hueiyen Lanpao Editorial :: January 29, 2010 -

Brutal crimes committed by beastly men, outrageous cheating by unscrupulous conmen, untold sufferings faced by gullible and unaware people and innocent men, women and children falling victims–these make part of the cycle of life in Manipur.

News of such incidents never end. In fact, people get to hear of such incidents virtually everyday. Just a few days back, came the news from Chennai, the capital city of Tamil Nadu that 93 children from Manipur and Assam were rescued by Tamil Nadu Police from illegal confinement at two unauthorized orphanages in Kanyakumari district.

First, 17 children in the age group of 8 to 12–16 including girls from Manipur and one from Tamil Nadu were rescued by child welfare authority and police from an unauthorized orphanage.

Then 76 boys in the age group of 5 to 15–54 from Manipur and 22 from Assam were rescued from another unapproved orphanage in the same district. As far as newspaper reports are concerned, all the children were locked up in a small room at the orphanages, malnourished and had signs of being beaten up. Chairperson of Tamil Nadu Child Welfare Committee (CWC), Dr P Manorama is reported to have told mediapersons in Chennai that there were strong suspicious that some of the girls might have been sexually harassed.

The children from Manipur and Assam were reportedly taken to Tamil Nadu by local agents promising their parents/guardians that they would be admitted to school in Channai and looked after well. The agents from Manipur had collected Rs 10,000 for each child from the parents.

But once the children reached Channai, the agents in collusion with an NGO called Reach Home Children Foundation took them to Kanyakumari district and locked them up in a small room of a house supposed to be a children's home under some name.

The children were ill treated, forced into doing domestic works, beaten up for any complaint while the girls were sexually abused. Three children reportedly escaped from that hell. What more a shocking story could there be than this? The useless, anti-social and illegal so-called orphanages must be banned and their masters punished severely.

The news that four youths from Manipur –all in their mid-twenties had been arrested by Tamil Nadu Police and remanded in judicial custody is somewhat heartwarming.

Ironically, the four arrested youths are all Meeteis, who readily trafficked the poor and innocent children of their own community to some unscrupulous people in a strange land. They are cheats, conmen and betrayers. They duped the parents of the children by falsely promising then of putting the children in school in Chennai, and what's more cruel is that the conmen had collected Rs 10,000 from each of the children's parents.

There is no reason to believe why these cheats would not have collected more money from the so-called NGO and owners of the orphanages there. It is a classic case of child trafficking, and the traffickers–the Meetei youths from Manipur staying in Chennai–must be sternly dealt with according to law of the land.

Whatever the cheats might be doing there in Tamil Nadu, be it studying or working, they couldn't be any good at it. What they are good at is obvious–cheating, deceiving, conning and duping innocent and gullible people. What they did to the innocent little children is an unforgivable crime, and a sin against God and humanity.

It's just unimaginable how painful and miserable life the children might have led during their forceful confinement at the unregistered children's homes in Tamil Nadu.

Meanwhile, authority concerned in Manipur needs to take immediate steps to bring the children back home-to their parents safely. All parents and families who had knowingly or unknowingly sent their children to other states for so-called free education must find out whether their children are in good care and getting education as promised or not.

Any suspicious going on should be reported at once. On the other hand, people of the state–whether poor or not–mustn't allow themselves to be carried away by the temptation of being free of bearing the responsibility of giving their children education and that's to be taken care of by some so-called religion-based charity NGO or whatever.

Later, one day they might hear shockingly unexpected and unbelievable news that will break their hearts. One should always be alert and ready to find out the credentials of people who come calling with the promise of giving free education, free food and free accommodation to his/her child in a state in the South or North or wherever.

It's time people got wiser. After all, such incidents of duping innocent villagers in Manipur are not new.