Are the children home safe ?. Review on Noida

Close to the border of the capital city, Delhi, stands the suburb of Noida. Of all our neighboring places, this one is the swankiest, boasting of malls and cineplexes. Dotted with skyscraper apartments and sprawling villas, it presents a peaceful exterior to the eye.

What lies beneath?

We in India pride ourselves on a society where children are “safe” – we talk of  benevolence and love for our neighbor’s little ones as much as for our own. We are a clean society, oh yes. We hear of the paedophiles on the internet but that’s not us. We don’t do things like that. Once in a while a movie about some primitive tribemen comes up that sacrifice children in the worship rituals. But that’s far awat from us. Yes, there are kidnapping, but you just have to pay the ransom, after all.

Crime against children ? No, we don’t have that here.

Like all suburbs, Noida has its wealthy rich. It also has all the amenities and an isolated environment, a police force that rests easy on a low crime profile area. So it is that a crime may go undiscovered for long.

So its is that Nithari took so long to come to light. The luring of innocent children, the cold-blooded killings, the mortal remains, the gory sordidness of the crime all came out one by one. The media delighted in reporting the travails of the parents and families. The police crime nexus was highlighted, the callousness of the officials thrown up in their faces. Some of the politicians were cowed while crowed and made much of it.

The aftermath

So it is that crimes go unreported for so long under the façade of normalcy.

After Nithari, the skeletons just never stopped tumbling out of the closet. So many in Noida, this many thousand in Bagalore, another few hundred foeticide in this big Hospital, a few kidnappings in that posh colony, a minor’s rape in that campus area.

Slowly it dawned, the children are not safe – they never were. They are vulnerable to crime to attack. They believe too easily, are led astray with a few promises.  They make easy targets. They forget what is taught about strangers. The safety net is not strong enough.

And so amid the peaceful isolated by lanes, wander the lost souls…