Editorial
This savagery must stop
Social resistance can help
It is really sad news that a minor domestic aid died from torture by her employer and two others are lying in hospital with marks of savage beating all over their bodies. This is cruelty on helpless minors in its worst form. Most of these poor boys and girls driven by grinding poverty land up as domestic servants, the fact of their servitude being a shame on us for our failure to protect their childhood. Many of them were abandoned by their pauperised parents and cannot even remember where they came from. Often they are made to work for long hours, even their tender age failing to draw an iota of sympathy from their employers.Their childhood is wasted in a nightmarish environment where brutal torture is the punishment for the slightest mistake or the failure to please the employer. The jobs are not guided by any kind of rules. They get very little for working beyond their endurance and are subjected to all kinds of harsh treatment. Quite a few torturers have been exposed to full public glare by the press and some of them have even faced legal proceedings. But the situation has not changed. Torturing minors on any pretext whatsoever is something no sane human being can approve of. But it is still taking place and more and more budding lives are being threatened by extreme forms of maltreatment in different households. It is, however, a positive development that people in general are showing a greater sensitivity to the problem. Such incidents are often reported to police by neighbours. Obviously, a social resistance against the insidious practice would make the perpetrators realise that their inhuman activities are condemned unequivocally by the people. It must also be ensured that the torturers are brought to justice under the child repression act. Finally, a rehabilitation scheme for such helpless children must be adopted. The number of existing homes for children that give shelter to the abandoned minors is far from adequate. We need a radical capacity-building there, given the ever swelling number of rootless children.
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