12-yr-old castrated, forced to be part of eunuch group

When their missing son came back home after six months, his family was unable to decide whether to celebrate his return or grieve his plight. Their son Apurva Singh (name changed) was a victim of forced castration, carried out by a group of eunuchs.

Updated on: Mar 5, 2013, 02:08:45 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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When their missing son came back home after six months, his family was unable to decide whether to celebrate his return or grieve his plight. Their son Apurva Singh (name changed) was a victim of forced castration, carried out by a group of eunuchs.

Six months ago, when the 12-year-old did not show up long after school hours, his worker parents approached the police who failed to locate him. Apurva became yet another name in their list of 5,540 children, who went missing last year.

The Singh family had lost all hope of finding their son, until last week when Apurva showed up at their doorstep. He was their son, but the child inside him was gone. "He was

much more mature," recalled a neighbour.

He had been lured by a person with the offer of sweets. That person had been friendly with him for some days. An unsuspecting Apurva ate the sweets he offered and fainted. When he woke up, he found himself on a dirty cot in a small dingy room.

Apurva was surrounded by a group of eunuchs, who offered him good food and new clothes and said they were now his family. He was kept there for the next few days. The eunuchs began teaching him all about his new life — of being a eunuch.

Almost two months later, the boy said he was given a tablet that made him unconscious. He was apparently castrated in his sleep and he woke up with pain in his private parts. “The eunuchs told me that the pain will subside soon and gave me medicines,” Apurva recalled.

The wounds healed in a month after which he was made a part of a group of eunuchs, who would collect money at marriage venues and the homes of newborns. He got his share of money every day. Confident that he will return on his own, Apurva was finally allowed to visit his family.

Rakesh Senger of Bachpan Bachao Andolan, a child rights group, said “Nearly seven children go missing from Delhi every day.” He said cases like Apurva’s were not unusual in Delhi, but their number was not very high.

A similar case was reported in 2008 from Jahangirpuri in northwest Delhi.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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