Police and organizations who work with rescued child prostitutes report a not insignificant number of these children having run away from home. One of the key reasons for this is they were being sexually abused in their homes. Sneh Sadan in Mumbaii runs fifteen homes for children who have run away from home, at any given point of time they house 370 children, of which half would be girls. Points out their social worker Sangeeta Punekar, ‘These children run away because they feel emotionally neglected or are abused at home, physically and sexually. They do not tell us this immediately but eventually they do disclose if they have been sexually abused. Most of the children doing the disclosing are the girls and they have run away to escape from the sexual abuse of their stepfathers, fathers, paternal and maternal uncles, even their aunts’ husbands or aunts’ father-in-laws. I watch these parents flying in from parts of India to take their children back home and I really wonder why they had these children in the first place. It seems to me that not too many children in India are being borne out of love.’

Child Rape

Sangeeta Punekar’s words echo in what organizations working with street children report. An increasing number of similar stories; with children running away from home because of sexual assault. These children have been subjected to varying degrees of sexual abuse, from oral sex to fondling to finger, object and penile penetration. A Star News feature on Delhi’s street children had a male child, he could not have been over twelve years of age, sleeping on a railway platform. He had run away from home in Patna where his stepfather, a police official, had been trying to rape him.

Penile penetration is the only kind being considered by the law as child rape currently, objects like candles, bottles and bananas are not; additionally, forcing the penis into a child’s mouth slips through the legal cracks and sodomy gets tagged under ‘unnatural offences’. (At the time of this book going to press, the Law Commission of India has recommended measures to redefine rape laws to prevent the sexual abuse of children and women; laws can only be changed when Parliament agrees.) But even under the restrictive legal definition of child rape—and the fact that rapes also go unreported—the statistics are horrific.

There is no breakdown available on how many of these child rapes have taken place at home or by male members of the family but the rough pattern would be around 50 per cent, maintain police authorities. Is it this 50 per cent which emboldens the other half towards sexually molesting a child or this extreme form of Child Sexual Abuse outside the house?

It can also happen like this. So suddenly, so devastatingly, in any home. A family in Calcutta orders a crate of mineral water, their nine-year-old daughter opens the door as the maid is otherwise occupied. The deliveryman is a known one, from around the corner. He whisks the child away to the deserted stairwell, rapes her and runs away. He is yet to be caught, he is not likely to be.