MUMBAI, India - Luxury living in India is coming with a price. Huge entrance gates, higher boundary walls and round-the-clock private security guards at private homes have become a necessity for the rich.Incidentally, all this is not so much for the security of family treasures as it is for the safety of their children because ransom kidnappings are becoming more ruthless by the day.
Knowing that the police are in most cases ineffective, gangs of ransom-seekers prey on well-off families, kidnapping children and demanding money in return for their release. But many times these kidnappers also end up killing the children, even while desperate parents negotiate with them on the ransom.
India at present ranks as the fifth most dangerous country in the world for kidnapping. This, criminologists say, is the fallout of the country's economic boom, when a large section of society made a sudden leap into the ranks of the upper middle class. Those who were left behind make kidnappings their way of getting revenge, demanding their share of the spoils.- A report by the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) says that at any given time, "more than 60,000 children go missing in India, out of which a dismal 30 per cent are traced. Many of them end up working as child labourers, drug mules or beggars."
The report also revealed the recent arrest in New Delhi of a gang of seven, headed by a woman, which sold children to childless couples. The gang had apparently kidnapped nine children and sold them to some "parents" for Rs50,000 to Rs70,000.Figures show that about five children go missing in the capital every day, many falling prey to drug trafficking rackets.
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