Fear shadows the children of Nithari

They say it takes a village to bring up a child. Close to a year after the remains of Nithari’s little ones were found in a drain, HT finds that the fear looming over the village is breaking an entire generation of children.

On december 29 last year, the remains of missing children were recovered from a drain in Noida. A year later, fear still stalks the young in the nearby village of Nithari. Some of them see themselves being chopped into pieces in their dreams, a recent study has found.

HT Image

A team of psychologists studied 38 children aged between nine and 12, and found that all of them feared that they too would become victims of serial killings: 97% felt “very frightened” in the presence of strangers, especially men, and 91% felt “extremely scared” suddenly for no reason, the study by Swanchetan, an NGO, found.

“Every night, I see a man chopping me up. But I can’t tell anyone about this — because my parents will scold me and my friends will laugh at me,” said a 10-year-old boy. Most of those interviewed for the study are children of Nithari’s migrant workers.

All the children said they couldn’t discuss the questions they had about the killings with adults. “They are growing up in extreme fear, with their sense of safety and trust totally gone,” said Swanchetan director Rajat Mitra.