Sacrificing your child

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Horror of India's child sacrifice

 

By Navdip Dhariwal

BBC correspondent, northern India

 

In India's remote northern villages it feels as if little has changed. The communities remain forgotten and woefully undeveloped, with low literacy and abject poverty.

 

They are conditions that for decades have bred superstition and a deep-rooted belief in the occult.

 

The village of Barha in the state of Uttar Pradesh is only a three-hour car drive from the capital Delhi. Yet here evil medieval practices have made their ugly presence known.

 

Lured with sweets

 

I was led by locals to a house that is kept under lock and key. They refuse to enter it.

 

 

"They [the tantrics] play on people's fears and superstitions - it is crazy"

S Raju

Campaigning journalist

 

Peering through the window bars you can see the eerie dark room inside, with peeling posters of Hindu gods adorning the walls and bundles of discarded bed clothes.

 

In one corner is the evidence we had come to find: blood-splattered walls and stained bricks.

 

It is the place where a little boy's life was ritually sacrificed.

 

Those who tortured and killed Akash Singh did so in a depraved belief - that the boy's death would offer them a better life.

 

"The woman who did this was crazed," the villagers say. "Akash was friends with all our children... We still cannot believe what happened here."

 

Akash's distraught mother discovered her son's mutilated body. The family was told he was lured away with sweets and begged his captors to set him free.

 

"First they cut out his tongue," his grandmother Harpyari told me. "Then they cut off his nose, then his ears. They chopped off his fingers. They killed him slowly."

 

'Profiting from fear'

 

The woman who abducted Akash lived just a few doors away. She claimed to be suffering from terrible nightmares and visions.

 

 

It was then she turned for guidance to a tantric, or holy man. It was under his instruction that she brutally sacrificed the boy - offering his blood and remains to the Hindu goddess of destruction.

 

There are temples across India that are devoted to the goddess. Childless couples, the impoverished and sick visit to pray that she can cure them.

 

Animal sacrifice is central to worship - but humans have not been temple victims since ancient times.

 

We were met with a hostile reception at the temple in Meerut. The high priest did not want us to see the ritual slaughter.

 

Tantrics like him clearly have an overwhelming grip on their followers. Often they are profiting from people's fears. In extreme cases others have instructed their followers to kill.

 

Crackdown campaign

 

S Raju is a journalist for the Hindustan Times and has been reporting on child sacrifice cases since 1997 in western Uttar Pradesh. He has reported on 38 similar cases.

 

In one incident he says a tantric told a young man that if he hanged and killed a small boy and lit a fire at his feet the smoke from the ritual could be used to lure the pretty village girl he had his eye on.

 

He has been campaigning for a crackdown on the practice of tantrics, alarmed at what he has seen.

 

"The masses need to be educated and dissuaded from following these men," he said. "They play on people's fears and superstitions - it is crazy."

 

Unreported

 

We visited the jail where those accused of murdering Akash were being held.

 

The prison warden told us of over 200 cases of child sacrifice in these parts over the last seven years.

 

He admitted many of the cases go unreported because the police are reluctant to tarnish the image of their state. He told us incidents of child sacrifice are often covered up.

 

Many of those killers are behind bars - but, chillingly, others poisoned by the same sinister beliefs remain at large.

 

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Hundreds of children 'vanishing'

 

Hundreds of African boys have disappeared from London schools, police investigating the murder of a boy whose torso was left in the Thames have said.

Scotland Yard asked London education authorities how many black boys aged four to seven had vanished from school.

 

Between July and September 2001, 300 had disappeared, and police fear thousands may go missing annually.

 

Child welfare experts say the figures hint at the scale of child trafficking, sometimes for labour or benefit fraud.

 

A previous BBC investigation found some African children were being held by their parents' creditors, so they could claim extra benefits.

 

'Lost in the system'

 

The boy found in the River Thames in September 2001 - called Adam by police - is thought to have been the victim of a ritual killing after being brought to London from Nigeria.

 

Detective Chief Inspector Will O'Reilly said inquiries revealed 300 black boys of a similar age to Adam had not reported back to school in the three months before his death and were "lost into the system".

 

 

They are being trafficked, they are being emotionally abused, there are incidences of domestic slavery, there is physical abuse, sexual abuse

Yinka Sunmonu

Author and journalist

 

 

"It is a large figure - far more than we anticipated when we started this line of inquiry," Mr O'Reilly said.

 

Of the missing boys, 299 came from Africa and one from the Caribbean.

 

Despite an international search, police were able to find only two of them, Mr O'Reilly said. Most of those questioned said the children had returned to Africa.

 

While there is nothing to suggest these children have been murdered, a lack of immigration records makes them almost impossible to trace, police say.

 

'Underground' problem

 

Chris Atkinson, policy adviser on child protection for the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children said children needed to be tracked upon arrival in the UK and called for a register of approved private foster carers.

 

 

We have quite a large number of parents or families who apparently go missing but actually just move on

Tim Benson

Head teacher

 

 

The BBC's Angus Stickler says part of the problem lies with the custom in many African communities of placing children with distant relatives.

 

The government does not currently force adults who take children in these circumstances, known as private fostering, to register. It fears doing so could drive the problem underground.

 

Felicity Collier, of the British Association for Adoption and Fostering, said the problem was already underground and she called for tighter controls.

 

But Tim Benson, head teacher at Nelson Primary School in East Ham, London, and a National Association of Head Teachers representative, said most children were probably happily ensconced in another school.

 

"We have quite a large number of parents or families who apparently go missing but actually just move on and don't know that they have to inform anyone," he said.

 

Children's register

 

A spokeswoman for the Department for Education and Skills said she could not comment on details of the investigation but the government was "deeply concerned" about any child missing from education.

 

Under the 2004 Children's Act - being implemented this year - local authorities are meant to advise people to tell social services if they are caring for a child.

 

Police and welfare groups hope this will make it easier to track vulnerable children.

 

Shadow secretary of state for children Theresa May said the Children's Act needed to go further, with a system allowing for prosecution of those who failed to register as carers.

 

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