Vulnerability of minors

The paedophile- a 38-year-old Delhi tailor, Sunil Rastogi’s shocking confession to police that he had sexually abused around 500 kids almost unchecked over a 12-year period is a sad commentary on our social system and our policing. The police claim that during the period he had attempted assault on more than 2,500 minors and had even been jailed for six months in Rudrapur, Uttarakhand, for an offence in 2006.

As per his confession, Rastogi preyed on victims in Delhi, west UP and Uttarakhand, mostly targeting girls walking home from school. This speaks volumes of the vulnerability of minors from poor families who have no protection on the streets from the police. It is also a sad reflection on the system in which girls are apparently too scared to confide in their parents and in the next of kin for fear of being thrashed. The society at large, instead of sympathising with and helping such kids, socially ostracises them which is what leads them to keep mum about such a heinous crime.

The paedophile used to blackmail his victims to come back to him again and again. That he had been committing the crime since 2004 with impunity shows that the police was not on the job as it should have been. It needs to be investigated whether some policemen were privy to his life of sexual crimes and colluded with him.

But ever so often, crimes involving the poor are not properly investigated. It is time that a high-level inquiry be instituted so that any complicity in Sunil Rastogi’s horrendous crimes may be unmasked. While psychologists must study his mental behaviour, such an offender must be handed out deterrent punishment so that this becomes a precedent for others to keep off this path.