Some of the remains of 17 victims, all from the same area, were found. The government of Uttar Pradesh at first sought to play down the tragedy that has struck immigrant or dalit families of one poor village.

New Delhi (AsiaNews) – Organ trafficking or sexual abuse may account for the disappearance of 38 children from Nithari village near Noida, 25km from Delhi, in Uttar Pradesh. Remains of 17 of them were found at the beginning of the year. The owner of the house where the victims were buried, Moninder Singh, and his domestic, Surender, were arrested and have confessed but this has not stopped the tragedy from taking on strong political overtones.

 

At first, before the national press splashed the ugly story as front page news, a special envoy of the Prime Minister of Uttar Pradesh, Mulayam Singh Yadav, who is his brother Shivpal Yadav, had described the murders as a “small and routine incidents” after visiting Nithari. Shipval defended the performance of the local police – accused of allowing months to pass before taking action – although the government had sacked six officers the day before and suspended another three because of their negligence in the case.

 

The All India Christian Council believes such an attitude could only be explained by the fact that the victims came from poor or dalit families, often from other states or belonging to religious minorities. The council sent a team to visit the afflicted families. The parents of the children who went missing say the children of rich or high caste families living in the surroundings had not lost their children. Even if they had gone missing, they were restored to their parents safe and sound, thanks to the help of the police and the authorities.

 

John Dayal, secretary-general of the All India Christian Council, said the magistrate of Chouhan district and the police stopped the council’s fact-finding team because they thought that the Christian community was trying to get its hands on the relatives of the victims by helping them. Dayal replied by saying that the magistrate had not understood the reason behind the visit of the Christian delegation to the families of the victims, which was to take the love and care that Jesus taught to offer to those in need.

 

The relatives of the missing children told the Christian Council team that the police had refused to heed their initial reports about the disappearance of their children. Dil Bahadur Sahi, a Nepalese resident of Nithari, told them about his fears and those of other parents that their children had been taken by a serial killer. All believe that if the police had heeded their initial reports – presented months ago – things would have come to a head earlier.

 

The government of Uttar Pradesh said it will offer compensation of just over 11,000 dollars to the parents of the victims but only eight have received it so far; the rest, especially those coming from other states, are still waiting.

 

Meanwhile, newspapers reported that the prime minister of the state did not visit Nithari, which is only 25km from the capital, because he is afraid of a superstition that government leaders going to this area lose their position.

 

Now the All India Christian Council is asking that: the central government provide psychological support for afflicted families and those living in the fear that their children have been killed too; the state and central government supply legal aid for families of the victims; a high-level commission of inquiry is set up and daycare centres are established for children who do not go to school. Alternatively the children could be entrusted to services run by non-governmental organizations.

• india
• children
• missing
• traffic
• organs
• violence
• sexual
• death
• dalits
• christians
• uttar
• pradesh
• dayal