In India a child is sexually assaulted every 15 minutes - my seven year old was at risk every time he left home

Puja Devi can still clearly remember the moment she saw the lifeless body of her seven-year-old son before she collapsed. She had remained hopeful he’d be found alive; even though a gnawing fear he was gone had kept her awake every night since he had been kidnapped. Flashing images of his bear cut feet fill her head every time she closes her eyes but she will not rest and grieve, she will fight for justice.

She knew her community had its share of  sexual predators and she knew her children – seven-year-old son and four-year-old daughter – were vulnerable every time they stepped out of the front door into the dark, damp lanes of their slum. But it was her home in east Delhi, northern India, it’s where they lived, she had to let them play and be children. ‘Families like mine have little choice,’ Puja explains.

It was April 2 and Puja was preparing dinner on her single gas stove as her son Purshotam, warmly called Chahat by his mother because she didn’t like his real name after she felt forced to name him by her in-laws, was outside the front door playing with his marbles.

Puja kept calling over to ensure he was safe. ‘I’m just here mamma,’ he called back. But the next time she called there was no answer. She collected her sari in her hands and ran outside yelling his name, but he was no where to be found. She rushed around the narrow lanes asking if anyone had seen him. ‘One woman said he’d gone with Sandeep,’ she recalls.

Sandeep Singh, 21, was an alcoholic and drug addict. He lived just opposite. And Puja immediately knew it was bad news. As soon as she rang her husband, Rakesh, 27, who works as a labourer earning Rs 5,000 (￡55) a month, they went to the police station together but officers allegedly did nothing.

For the next 24 hours Puja and Rakesh along with family members, searched the local rubbish grounds, water tanks, and gardens for little Chahat. The next day they returned to the police and begged them to respond. On April 4, the police found Sandeep Singh at a relative’s house in Noida. And he quickly confessed to the crime.

Inspector Anand Yadav, from Okhla Police Station, east Delhi, said the accused confessed and directed the officers to the body. ‘The accused has confessed to kidnapping and killing the boy. He said he lured the boy away with chocolate and tried to sodomise the boy but when he started screaming he strangled him.’ On the morning of April 5, the police found the decomposed body just a two-minute walk from the family home, surrounded by garbage.

‘The police didn’t say they’d found his body, they just said they found our son,’ Puja explains. ‘I rushed with a glimmer of hope but when I arrived and saw his feet sticking out from under a blanket I knew, and I just collapsed.’

That evening the family cremated the little boy in a traditional Hindu burial.

A sexual offence is committed against a child in India every 15 minutes. The numbers of sexual offences registered against children increased by an alarming 300% over the last five years

Helen Roberts

Last month saw a shocking number of rape attacks on children and thousands of people took to the streets to protest the slow rate of convictions, primarily sparked by the rape and murder of an eight-year-old Muslim girl, in January, in the northern state of Jammu and Kashmir.

And last week, India’s government approved an amendment to the law that will set the minimum penalty for the gang rape of a child under 12 to life imprisonment or death.

CRY - Child Rights and You, an Indian non-governmental organisation that believes in every child’s right to a childhood - has recently released a detailed analysis of an Indian National Crime Records Bureau report, which revealed a steep rise in sexual crimes against children up from 18,967 in 2006 to 106,958 in 2016, resulting in the finding that a sexual offence is committed against a child in India every 15 minutes. The numbers of sexual offences registered against children increased by an alarming 300% over the last five years.

Komal Ganotra, Director of CRY, said: ‘Although the topic has been debated and deliberated at length for quite some time now, what we really lack is an all-encompassing concerted action by all duty bearers. We have fallen short with not having robust prevention mechanism, poor awareness on the issue, failure in rolling out rigorous policies and poor conviction rates.’

Puja keeps going over that day and wondering if she could have done anything differently. ‘I knew there were bad men, we’re in a city so of course there are bad men,’ says Puja. ‘I used to walk him to school, I never left him alone. But still, this happened to us. 

'When will the police do something? Our children cannot play on the streets safely. We are surrounded by men who want to harm our children, whether they are girls or boys, they are not safe. We came here from Bihar for work opportunities, for the better schools, for a better future but we have been left shattered. When will the next family be shattered to pieces?’