The Racket

When one watches Slumdog Millionaire, one wonders whether in reality a racket as brutal as child trafficking really exist. The smuggling of young kids, training them to sing bhajans, and then using them to beg on roads makes us question the authenticity of the whole process. May be this is’nt real. But things more gruesome than this are…

When I first stepped in the Cuffe Parade slum, I instantly felt nauseated. Was I sick? No! It was the atrocious stink which filled my nostrils and reached the pit of my stomach that made me want to puke. Even when I was busy trying to control my nausea, I could not help but get surprised by the fact that the people around me- the ‘slum-dwellers’, were absolutely fine with the obnoxious stink that made me sick. Recovering from that initial attack, I moved further into the depths of the slum. A mix of dilapidated shanties and ‘pacca’ houses flanked either side of the ‘kachha’ road. People, specially men kept staring at me with eyeballs ready to pop out any instant. I felt an urgent need to go and grab a stole or ‘chunni’ for myself. Why did I come here? I kept asking myself. If it was not for this assignment I had to do, I would never have come here.

The slum I was roaming in can be fairly categorised as a well-to-do slum. People do not live in extreme poverty here, although you could fairly guess that they do struggle to make their both ends meet. For basic bread and butter one has to work for the whole day and only then can he expect a decent meal. My initial shyness evaporated in about twenty minutes, and then I started my interaction. I was chit-chatting with young boys playing football when my eyes fell on a policeman who was keeping his eyes steadily on the boys. I decided to talk to him. Mohan Bhisai, the officer who has been appointed to look after kids in that lane spoke in a guarded tone, as if not sure how much to reveal. “My senior instructed me to stay here”, he said. “I look after the kids who play here since there have been several kidnappings in the past”, he further added after a little urging from my side. Zapped, I stared back at the kids. Were they even aware of the potential threat they faced in their own locality? The home, the shelter, the protective cocoon, which made them feel so secure, was in fact one of the most dangerous place to live in.

I kept asking other people, since Mr. Bhisai was in no mood to divulge further details. What I gathered was shocking. Young kids, less than six to seven years old were kidnapped and found dead a few days later near the slum. There were two things common in all the missing kids- their dead bodies were invariably discovered on a ground near Lalit building in Cuffe Parade and even more gruesome was the fact that the kidneys of all the corpses were found missing. What was shown in the movie Slumdog Millionaire was nothing in front of this horrifying kidney racket.

Bharat Chauhan, a young banjara, spoke about how his neighbour’s three-year-old daughter was kidnapped and later found dead on the same ground. “Her kidney was missing”, he confirmed. And what he added on was even more horrendous- the girl’s head was chopped off. Such brutalities immediately alerted the Cuffe Parade police and they installed CCTV cameras along with stationing policemen in every lane of the slum. When asked, people talk about such kidnappings with caution, since they have been instructed not to discuss much about it by the police.

I went to the police station to enquire further, since the locals were not giving in much. Jagannath Gaikwad of Cuffe Parade Police station mentioned that the first kidnapping took place on October 20, 2011 when a girl went missing from Sayonara Junction. Days later her dead body was recovered. The second kidnapping happened on January 12 2012. This time a three year old girl was the target, she was kidnapped while she was walking with her grandmother. The third incident took place on April 18, 2012, and yet again a girl was kidnapped. All the girls were found dead after a few days. The police preferred to keep mum when asked if there were any signs of sexual assault. And they maintaned their silence when asked about kidneys being stolen from the bodies. Their silence forced my thoughts to linger on one possibility- a huge racket was at play here. Its web was far-fetched and full of conceits. No one knew what to say or whom to blame. The police has not yet unearthed evidence against a single party. Too many questions and too many doubts, so far nothing has been answered.

However, the police did start taking measures with the second kidnapping and stringent action scared off perpetrators. But fear flies high, and slum-dwellers still worry about their little ones playing outside blissfully. The ignorant children are not even aware that they’ll be picked by strangers from just outside their houses. The people living there stated that kids were lured by chocolates and they followed the person wherever he took them. Even after repeated attempts at cautioning kids, this process of trapping kids continues.

Can the children of Cuffe Parade be saved from a racket that is freshly brewing? For that we need to rely on the police and make the slum dwellers more cautious. Only then can one hope to save what looks like another Slumdog Millionaire in making.