The Beggar Mafia
One of most shocking scenes in the Oscar-winning film ‘Slumdog Millionaire’ involves a group of men intentionally claiming a boy so that he would gain more sympathy as a street beggar. The film was completely storied, but like in many parts of the world, the beggar mafia is an active criminal activity exploiting children in some parts of India as well.
This article gives a spotlight on what it calls the “Beggar Mafia” and just how terrible the situation is for young children. It opens with specific stories about children who have been deliberately maimed for financial gain by criminals.
“Dalbeer, 15, is another victim of this shocking industry. Reduced to begging at the railway station after his parents died, Dalbeer was approached by two friendly older strangers one day. ‘I thought they were maybe social workers,’ he told me. ‘I thought they could help me.’
But he was taken from everything he knew to Nagpur, a city a thousand miles from Mumbai, after the woman told him it would ‘be better there’.”
Studies from other parts of the country show that children who are at risk because of their families’ extreme poverty do have trouble getting enough nutrition, care, and education. Estimates say that a majority of children who end up in Child Care Institutions (CCIs) come from families who are facing the daunting task of surviving acute or chronic poverty.
Caption : Beggar Mafia controlling the barriered beggars
मुझे भीख माफिया ने अगवा कर लिया, उन्होंने मुझे इंजेक्शन दिया जिससे मैं अंधा हो गया, मेरी उंगलियां कट गईं, 24 वर्षीय यूपी के व्यक्ति ने कहा
Real Beggar Mafia Story – Kanpur (Uttar Pradesh), November 7
He was abducted by the begging mafia six months ago. The gang gave him an injection that made him blind. They did cut his fingers of his hand and foot and assaulted him to give injury marks – all this was done to make him a fit and fat beggar.
As his condition worsened and he could not even beg down, the gang conveniently dumped him near a slum area where he laid unconscious for quite some time till the police rescued him and took him to hospital.
Suresh, 24, a daily wage laborer cries bitterly as he recounts his tale of issues.
“I was subjected to heinous crimes. They intoxicated me and then injected a chemical in the eye to make me blind. They cut off the fingers of my hand and foot,” he said.
Real Full Story at Ultimate Crimes on Humanity by Beggar Mafia.
(Credits : The Tribune)
Beggar Mafia : Courageously explained by a youtuber (Credits : Dhruv Rathee)
Behind The Curtains
BEGGING – A Profitable Business for Some
Begging is one of the serious social problems all over India. Just like a coin having two sides, the concept of begging has two sides too. First, begging is the right of people who have no other means of survival. This was observed in a landmark judgment passed by the Hon’ble High Court of Delhi in a Writ Petition filed before it for deciding the constitutional validity of the Bombay Prevention of Begging Act, 1959.
On the other side there are flocks of beggars who are puppets in the hands of faceless mafias (the Beggar Mafia) , mercilessly living out of the torments of the beggars by using them as a tool to bring wealth. More often the profits of begging are denied to beggars and it is harvested by the unholy criminals who trap people for begging and forcefully make them ask for alms. All the people who are engaged in begging were not cursed to have such an awful life, their blessed lives were re-shaped into one filled with hardships by these faceless mafias called the ‘begging mafia’.
Organized begging involves abduction of children by the mafia, which is countenanced in India. The National, a private english daily newspaper reported about an 8 year old girl child kidnapped by the begging mafia, who was subsequently found begging outside a temple along with other beggars in Amritsar in India’s northern state of Punjab by her mother.
According to political statistics, around 44,000 children disappear in India each year. Invariably, the major underlining reason for the surge in child abduction is the likelihood of getting twice the alms out of sympathy in comparison with aged or young beggars. They snatch children, male or female, from their guardians and later handicap them through maiming and torturing with an eye to swiftly achieve their ruthless motives. This inhuman treatment will result in permanent disablement of body parts and permanent privation of body parts, thereby shuts their doors of freedom.
Soon after abduction the begging techniques such as places where they should go asking alms, the kind of people they should approach and mannerisms to make everyone sympathize are plummeted on these children. The beggars who refuse to follow the commands of mafia groups will are rewarded with harsh and barbaric punishments. Swami Agnivesh, a child rights activist from New Delhi said that ‘it is unfortunate that instead of schools they have to beg on the roads and nobody talks about them’.
One major reason behind the evolution of the social issue of begging is poverty, over which the Beggar Mafia takes full benefit.
When wealth is equally distributed we can lessen the gap between rich and poor and gradually one dark side of begging will go off. The flip side is the showing illegal forcing by the mafia placing the destitute and deprived people for begging irrespective of their age.
Article 23 in the Indian Constitution prohibits traffic of human beings and beggars and other forms of forced labor, whereas, section 363A of the Indian Penal Code provides punishment for a person who kidnaps or maims a minor for the purposes of begging and Section 76 of the Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Act, 2015 provides punishment to those who employ children for begging.
However, there is no Central legislation exterminating or preventing the menace of begging. But there are State legislations encompassing the evil of begging and one example is that of the Maharashtra Prevention of Begging Act, 1960. Section 11 of the Act imposes penalty for employing or causing persons to beg or using them for purposes of begging. INDIA TODAY News reported that even beggar homes in Delhi lack facilities whereof one of inmates died due to malnutrition and gross negligence on the part of the Government.
Time has come for creation and effective implementation of state and central laws to thwart the business operations of the mafia and to emancipate and rehabilitate the victims of such mafias.
Beggar Mafia : The Neck Holding
Begging is criminalized in cities such as Mumbai and Delhi as per the Bombay Prevention of Begging Act, BPBA (1959).
Under this law, officials of the Social Welfare Department, assisted by the police, conduct raids to pick up beggars who they then try in special courts called ‘beggar courts’. If convicted, they are sent to certified institutions called ‘beggar homes’, also known as Sewa Kutir, for a period ranging from one to ten years for detention, training and employment. The government of Delhi, besides criminalizing alms-seeking, has also criminalized almsgiving at traffic signals, to reduce the ‘nuisance’ of begging and ensure the smooth flow of traffic.
Aashray Adhikar Abhiyan and the People’s Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL) have criticized this Act and advocated for its repeal. Section 2(1) of the BPBA broadly defines ‘beggars’ as those individuals who directly solicit alms, as well as those who have no visible means of subsistence and are found wandering around. Therefore, as a result of the enforcement of this law, the homeless are often mistaken for beggars. Beggar homes, which are meant to provide vocational training, have often been found to have abysmal living conditions.
In 2018, the Delhi High Court declared 25 provisions of the Bombay Prevention of Begging Act (1959) as unconstitutional, following petitions filed by Harsh Mander and Karnika Sawhney. In 2021, the Supreme Court refused to ban begging and observed that begging was a socioeconomic problem.
In pictures: Indian child beggars
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There are some 60,000 beggars on the streets of the Indian capital, Delhi. A third of them are under 18 years of age.
Children escaping poverty from other parts of the country come to Delhi and end up begging. Some of them run away from their homes; others live with their families and beg. Children in India have the right to food and education, but begging remains rampant.
Child beggars are mainly found in busy market places, at traffic lights, railway stations, bus stops, outside metro stations, subways, religious places and tourist destinations. Begging in busy areas offers them a chance to make more money.
Many poor families feel they have no choice but to make their children beg to earn a living. Children such as these can be seen begging alongside their parents, like these child beggars who wait outside the Jama Masjid (mosque) in old Delhi.
Sonu lives with his mother in a Sikh temple and seeks alms and food from commuters in the neighborhood. He earns around 50 rupees (83 cents; 48 pence) a day. He says he does not know the whereabouts of his father.
Police and activists say thousands of children are also abducted from their homes across the country and forced to beg on the streets of big cities by suspected traffickers. Here, a young girl begs in the busy business district of Connaught Place.
Child rights campaigners say the children are often forced to work for begging mafias, they are often starved to make them look thin and weak to generate sympathy from people. Campaigners say begging mafias often maim the children as disabled beggars get more money than healthy ones.
Many of these children end up taking drugs and becoming victims of sexual abuse, according to activists. There are no federal laws to protect India’s child beggars or to help them improve their lives.
