Human rights, For a baby

To

Honourable Shri Justice Cyriac Joseph

Acting Chairperson, NHRC

Respected Sir

Thanking you for the your enlightening talk on Lok Sabha Channel, today.  I wish you all the more success in your quest for spreading Human rights' awareness.

in the capacity of a civilian citizen, I have a rather disturbing incidence to report, belonging to  Human Rights violation of a baby.

At the Vytilla Junction, which is the entrance to the Cochin city, one of the biggest traffic junction, which caters to most  traffic to and from Kochi city.

On 14th of this month, while  waiting in my car for the signal, at 10:30AM, I was approached by a young lady in her late teens, for a sale of a lottery ticket. She was carrying on her shoulders, a baby whom she was having totally covered and hidden by a thick cloth.

I did purchase a ticket from her and in an earnest gesture to find out the condition of the child on her shoulders. asked her to lift the cloth cover.

I was shocked to see a sleeping child of one to one and half years of age, fully drenched in sweat, again wrapped inside another cloth, The baby was  asleep as though it had been  drugged.
There is no chance that a small baby would sleep in that searing Sun of the 10:30AM, in a bright and sunny day. 

One redeeming quality I found from the young lady was that she was not into begging for money. Also, that she did not think twice in taking off the cloth from me the baby. The woman did not understand any  Malayalam language that I spoke to her, but could understand my Hindi very well. Thus, it is obvious that the lady is  a typical gypsy kind of family of wanderers from the Northern states of our country. At this rate of torture and dehydration, the child might not survive long.  Various possibilities include :-

1. The reason for the insensitivity to the child's plight may be because the child might have been stolen from somewhere and the woman might be a part of a racket , trying to earn sympathies and sale of lottery.

2. Maybe the lottery itself is fake and a big Mafia is behind a new form of begging in the form of Lottery ticket sale.

3. Maybe the child is hers, but she is so young and un-educated to know the implications of the torture to her baby.

4. The lottery business, run by the state, has been under lots of criticism in the recent years for it supposedly being subverted by the interstate  lottery Mafia.

I am attaching a copy of the Lottery Ticket along with this E-mail, hoping that it might help to track down the lady and the baby for rehabilitation.

I contacted the 1098 number of the child helpline and did inform about this incident. Though the helpline personal did inform that they would look into the matter and check out on the area for  the lady and the child and would take steps to rehabilitate the woman and the child. The helpline personnel have taken my cell number. But I have not received any response from them yet.

I understand the constraints of the machinery of the helpline system. 

I wish that  esteemed establishment will take up the issue in an earnest way and will help in saving  young ladies and children from being used for any form of trafficking, and also find ways to rehabilitate these women and children.