Heartache for India's new rich as brutal kidnappers target their children
Gethin Chamberlain
The Observer, Sunday 10 July 2011
The last picture that Yash Lakhotia's family have of him was taken at
the shopping mall, the most middle-class of Indian destinations. It
shows him smiling, with his arm around his big sister, Neha. Both are
wearing smart western clothes, looking the epitome of the country's new,
upwardly mobile generation.
But it was a look that cost Yash his life. Two days after the photograph
was taken, a car drew up outside the seven-year-old's school as he was
leaving. Yash must have assumed that the man inside had been sent by his
father to collect him. He got in, the door closed, and he was gone.
Neighbours found his body three days later, dumped among bushes near the
waterfront in Howrah, Kolkata's twin city. He was just one more victim
of India's burgeoning kidnap industry.
As the country's economy booms and millions make the leap from poverty
to the ranks of the new middle class, there has been a corresponding
surge in kidnapping for ransom as those who feel left behind seek a
share of the spoils.
Insurers rank India as the fifth most dangerous country in the world for
kidnapping, with one US firm warning last month that westerners should
now also consider themselves targets.
In May, India's National Human Rights Commission estimated that 60,000
children go missing nationwide every year; fewer than a third are found.
Some are taken to work in factories or end up as beggars, but figures
from Delhi police show that kidnap for ransom is on the rise. In 2008,
there were 1,233 cases in the national capital; by last year that had
soared to 2,975. In the first three months of 2011, 802 cases were
registered.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/jul/10/india-howrah-kolkata-kidnap
