Begging racket exposes abuse and exploitation of children in Navi Mumbai
NAVI MUMBAI: A city activist recently captured on camera how a small seven-year-old beggar girl was beaten with a stick by a beggar woman at Vashi, Sector 17. The activist, Madhu Shankar, observed that the woman controls around a dozen kids who are forced to beg under the scorching sun on the roads. Each kid has to carry a small sling purse, and if the children are unable to fill up their purses with some money through begging, the woman hits them with the stick and orders them to beg more.
"As soon as I started video recording this assault on the girl child, the older woman gestured for all the kids to run away and laughingly told me that they were just 'joking and playing'. However, I told her that I called the police, and so they should face the consequences," said Shankar.
You Can Also Check:
Mumbai AQI
|
Weather in Mumbai
|
Bank Holidays in Mumbai
|
Public Holidays in Mumbai
When the Vashi police arrived at the spot, they only rounded up the woman and another adult to be taken to the police station. "At the police station, the woman started making threatening gestures towards me and told the cops that they only sell flowers and do not beg. They also boasted that they know some 'DCP' in Maharashtra who will help them out," said the activist.
by Taboola
by Taboola
Sponsored Links
Sponsored Links
Promoted Links
Promoted Links
You May Like
Google Brain Co-Founder Andrew Ng, Recommends: Read These 5 Books And Turn Your Life Around
Blinkist: Andrew Ng's Reading List
Undo
The police then called the ChildLine officials, who are linked to the Maharashtra govt for woman and child development. The cops did not lodge an FIR, as they said that for the first offence, they have to warn the beggars, and if they are caught again, then they are arrested and sent to beggars' homes, etc.
The activist Shankar said that these children do not get any basic education. To this, the ChildLine officials said that they will talk to NMMC to get some space in Vashi, where they can start the basic literacy of the beggar children. Altaf Kagazi of ChildLine told Mirror: "The beggars at Vashi belong to the Pardhi tribal community, which is quite backward in society. We will talk to the civic officials to start the basic literacy programme for beggar children."
Also, city activists said that despite police combing operations, the beggars often return to the streets after a few days, which indicates there are kingpins behind the
begging racket
who need to be busted. Otherwise, the future of begging children will remain bleak, said Shankar.
Last year, Mumbai Mirror also covered another cruel feature of the begging racket wherein small babies who are barely three to six months old are drugged by giving them some sedative so that they remain drowsy and sleep in the arms of an older beggar who begs at traffic signals, while showcasing the baby in arm to gain some pity from motorists.
New Panvel-based social activist, Pastor K M Philip, of SEAL Ashram, which rescues and shelters homeless persons, recalled how he once came across a very ill beggar girl (called Vidya) who was made to lie down on a foot-over bridge of Bhandup railway station by her handlers in 2001. Philip informed the railway authorities and also admitted the minor girl to a hospital, but she passed away, after only asking the social activist to give her a 'roti' when she briefly woke up at the hospital.
Philip recalled that the death of Vidya shook him up since she was suffering from TB and was also HIV positive, but still, she was forced to beg, by keeping a plastic begging bowl next to her. That particular day, when Philip admitted her, Vidya managed to collect Rs 65.50 in her begging bowl. Philip has kept this plastic jar with him all these years and called it 'Tears of Vidya'.
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
New Indian Express
26 minutes ago
- New Indian Express
Masked gang waylays Kerala jeweller on Coimbatore highway, robs him of 1.25 kg of gold bars
COIMBATORE: In a daring daylight robbery, a five-member masked gang robbed 1.25 kilogram of gold bars along with cash by waylaying a Thrissur-based jeweller at Ettimadai on the national highway stretch in Coimbatore on Saturday morning. The gangsters targeted J Jaison Jacob (55) of Palakkal village in Thrissur district where he owns a jewellery shop along with a goldsmithery unit, said the KG Chavadi police in Coimbatore. Jaison and his employee S Vishnu (20) were returning to his native place in Jaison's car from the Coimbatore railway station when the incident occurred. Earlier, they had arrived in the city by train from Chennai after buying gold bars weighing 1.25 kg from a few shops in Chennai. While the duo reached near a petroleum bunk on the Palakkad-bound national highway, a lorry waylaid the car. Subsequently, the five-member gang who were hiding nearby asked Jaison to open the door. When he resisted, one of the gang members damaged the car window using an iron rod. Fearing an attack, Jaison opened the door, and subsequently the gang got into the car. "The gang also shifted Jaison, who was driving the car, to the backseat, and one of the members drove the car on the same highway. After spraying pepper spray, the gang stole the gold bars which were kept under the seat at knifepoint, and left Jaison and Vishnu on the roadside. Subsequently, the gang travelled in the same car towards the Velanthavalam route on another route," said a police officer of the KG Chavadi police station. After help from fellow motorists, Jaison filed a complaint at the KG Chavadi police station. Coimbatore SP K Karthikeyan visited the spot. "As the gang spoke in Malayalam, we suspect the suspects were from Kerala. The gang travelled for two kilometres after taking the car at 6.45am and assaulting Jaison and Vishnu. The gang also took Rs 60,000 cash that Jaison had kept in the car. We will arrest them soon by deploying a special team," the SP said. We are coordinating with the Kerala Police to nab the culprits, he added. [At the current market price of about Rs 9,320 per sovereign for 22 carat gold in Chennai, 1.25 kg or 156 sovereigns of gold costs approximately Rs 14,539,20. (1 kg = 1,000 g = 125 sovereigns.)]
Time of India
27 minutes ago
- Time of India
Political violence is threaded through recent US history. The motives and justifications vary
The assassination of one Democratic Minnesota state lawmaker and her husband, and the shooting of another lawmaker and his wife at their homes, is just the latest addition to a long and unsettling roll call of political violence in the United States. The list, in the past two months alone: the killing of two Israeli embassy staffers in Washington, D.C. The firebombing of a Colorado march calling for the release of Israeli hostages, and the firebombing of the official residence of Pennsylvania's governor - on a Jewish holiday while he and his family were inside. And here's just a sampling of some other disturbing attacks before that - the assassination of a health care executive on the streets of New York City late last year, the attempted assassination of Donald Trump in small-town Pennsylvania during his presidential campaign last year, the 2022 attack on the husband of former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi by a believer in right-wing conspiracy theories, and the 2017 shooting by a liberal gunman at a GOP practice for the congressional softball game. Play Video Pause Skip Backward Skip Forward Unmute Current Time 0:00 / Duration 0:00 Loaded : 0% 0:00 Stream Type LIVE Seek to live, currently behind live LIVE Remaining Time - 0:00 1x Playback Rate Chapters Chapters Descriptions descriptions off , selected Captions captions settings , opens captions settings dialog captions off , selected Audio Track Picture-in-Picture Fullscreen This is a modal window. Beginning of dialog window. Escape will cancel and close the window. Text Color White Black Red Green Blue Yellow Magenta Cyan Opacity Opaque Semi-Transparent Text Background Color Black White Red Green Blue Yellow Magenta Cyan Opacity Opaque Semi-Transparent Transparent Caption Area Background Color Black White Red Green Blue Yellow Magenta Cyan Opacity Transparent Semi-Transparent Opaque Font Size 50% 75% 100% 125% 150% 175% 200% 300% 400% Text Edge Style None Raised Depressed Uniform Drop shadow Font Family Proportional Sans-Serif Monospace Sans-Serif Proportional Serif Monospace Serif Casual Script Small Caps Reset restore all settings to the default values Done Close Modal Dialog End of dialog window. by Taboola by Taboola Sponsored Links Sponsored Links Promoted Links Promoted Links You May Like Live Comfortably: 60 m² Prefab Bungalow for Seniors in El Alto Pre Fabricated Homes | Search Ads Search Now Undo "We've entered into this especially scary time in the country where it feels the sort of norms and rhetoric and rules that would tamp down on violence have been lifted," said Matt Dallek, a political scientist at Georgetown University who studies extremism. "A lot of people are receiving signals from the culture." Politics behind both individual shootings and massacres Politics have also driven large-scale massacres. Gunmen who killed 11 worshippers at a synagogue in Pittsburgh in 2018, 23 shoppers at a heavily Latino Walmart in El Paso in 2019 and 10 Black people at a Buffalo grocery store in 2022 each cited the conspiracy theory that a secret cabal of Jews were trying to replace white people with people of color. That has become a staple on parts of the right that support Trump's push to limit immigration. Live Events The Anti-Defamation League found that from 2022 through 2024, all of the 61 political killings in the United States were committed by right-wing extremists. That changed on the first day of 2025, when a Texas man flying the flag of the Islamic State group killed 14 people by driving his truck through a crowded New Orleans street before being fatally shot by police. "You're seeing acts of violence from all different ideologies," said Jacob Ware, a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations who researches terrorism. "It feels more random and chaotic and more frequent." The United States has a long and grim history of political violence, from presidential assassinations dating back to the killing of President Abraham Lincoln to lynchings and violence aimed at Black people in the South to the 1954 shooting inside Congress by four Puerto Rican nationalists. Experts say the past few years, however, have likely reached a level not seen since the tumultuous days of the 1960s and 1970s, when icons like Martin Luther King, Jr., John F. Kennedy, Malcolm X and Robert F. Kennedy were assassinated. Ware noted that the most recent surge comes after the new Trump administration has shuttered units that focus on investigating white supremacist extremism and pushed federal law enforcement to spend less time on anti-terrorism and more on detaining people who are in the country illegally. "We're at the point, after these six weeks, where we have to ask about how effectively the Trump administration is combating terrorism," Ware said. Of course, one of Trump's first acts in office was to pardon those involved in the largest act of domestic political violence this century - the Jan. 6, 2021 assault on the U.S. Capitol, intended to prevent Congress from certifying Trump's 2020 election loss. Those pardons broadcast a signal to would-be extremists on either side of the political debate, Dallek said: "They sent a very strong message that violence, as long as you're a Trump supporter, will be permitted and may be rewarded." Ideologies aren't always aligned - or coherent Often, those who engage in political violence don't have clearly defined ideologies that easily monto the country's partisan divides. A man who died after he detonated a car bomb outside a Palm Springs fertility clinic last month left writings urging people not to procreate and expressed what the FBI called "nihilistic ideations." But, like clockwork, each political attack seems to inspire partisans to find evidence the attacker is on the other side. Little was known about the man police identified as a suspect in the Minnesota attacks, 57-year-old Vance Boelter . Authorities say they found a list of other apparent targets that included other Democratic officials, abortion clinics and abortion rights advocates, as well as fliers for the day's anti-Trump parades. Conservatives online seized on the fliers - and the fact that Boetler had apparently once been appointed to a state workforce development board by Democratic Gov. Tim Walz - to claim the suspect must be a liberal. "The far left is murderously violent," billionaire Elon Musk posted on his social media site, X. It was reminiscent of the fallout from the attack on Paul Pelosi, the former House speaker's then-82-year-old husband, who was seriously injured by a man wielding a hammer. Right-wing figures theorized the assailant was a secret lover rather than what authorities said he was: a believer in pro-Trump conspiracy theories who broke into the Pelosi home echoing Jan. 6 rioters who broke into the Capitol by saying: "Where is Nancy?!" On Saturday, Nancy Pelosi posted a statement on X decrying the Minnesota attack. "All of us must remember that it's not only the act of violence, but also the reaction to it, that can normalize it," she wrote. Trump had mocked the Pelosis after the 2022 attack, but on Saturday he joined in the official bipartisan condemnation of the Minnesota shootings, calling them "horrific violence." The president has, however, consistently broken new ground with his bellicose rhetoric towards his political opponents, who he routinely calls "sick" and "evil," and has talked repeatedly about how violence is needed to quell protests. The Minnesota attack occurred after Trump took the extraordinary step of mobilizing the military to try to control protests against his administration's immigration operations in Los Angeles during the past week, when he pledged to "HIT" disrespectful protesters and warned of a "migrant invasion" of the city. Dallek said Trump has been "both a victim and an accelerant" of the charged, dehumanizing political rhetoric that is flooding the country. "It feels as if the extremists are in the saddle," he said, "and the extremists are the ones driving our rhetoric and politics."
Time of India
38 minutes ago
- Time of India
Honeymoon murder case: Raja Raghuvanshi's family demands narco test
The murder case of Raja Raghuvanshi has taken a new turn as his family members raised serious questions over the statements made by his wife, Sonam Raghuvanshi , and her alleged accomplices. According to police, Raja Raghuvanshi, who was on his honeymoon in Meghalaya, had gone missing before his murder. The investigation led to the arrest of Sonam and four others. In Indore, Raja's family organised a candle march demanding justice and a deeper investigation. by Taboola by Taboola Sponsored Links Sponsored Links Promoted Links Promoted Links You May Like Elegant New Scooters For Seniors In 2024: The Prices May Surprise You Mobility Scooter | Search Ads Learn More Undo His brother, Vipin Raghuvanshi, appealed for a narco test on the accused. Speaking to ANI, he said, "The way Sonam and Raj are misleading the police is shocking. Once a narco test is done, it will be revealed how much Sonam is lying about it. How all the accused are lying indicates that they may know more about the murder... I cannot talk to Sonam's parents yet. Why haven't they made any statements through the media? For instance, Raj claims Sonam has been tying Rakhi to Govind and him for three years. Doesn't her mother know this? Police need to question her parents. Why have you all hidden this from the media and police?" Live Events Raja's brother, Sachin Raghuvanshi, who led the candle march, said, "To get justice for Raja , I will go anywhere in the world... This candle march is organised so that Raja's soul may attain peace..." Meghalaya BJP president defends state's image Meghalaya BJP President Rikman G Momin condemned those trying to link the murder to the state's safety. "The blame has already been placed on our state, so those who are blaming have to come and apologise to our state. Meghalaya is a safe and tourist-friendly state... Everyone can come to Meghalaya, and we receive everyone as our brothers and sisters. There is no difference; everyone is Indian, and we are Indians. We will work together... I salute the Meghalaya police for cracking this case," he said. Government plans to strengthen security laws Following the incident, the Meghalaya government has decided to revisit the Meghalaya Resident Safety and Security Act (MRSSA). Meghalaya Minister Alexander Laloo Hek said, "During the cabinet meeting yesterday a very important decision was taken to revisit the Meghalaya Resident Safety and Security Act (MRSSA) and the tourists coming to Meghalaya have to be registered." "We have also decided to install CCTV in all tourist places in Meghalaya as well as in hotels, homestays, lodges," he added. When asked about Raja Raghuvanshi and Sonam Raghuvanshi hiring a Scooty in Shillong, the minister said, "For now, we don't know whether it's illegal or not, but it is being said that they have hired the Scooty from Shillong only."
