There’s a reason why I skipped the term ‘children’, instead used ‘childhood’, because it is indeed a loaded term impregnated with many complexities and intricacies. We are used to hearing the term ‘children’ which as Indians ought to give utmost importance. Deliberately I have chosen childhood because it’s intensity is such that it calls for all seriousness exploding the entire gamut of this revolves around it. Lifters of children are growing in Bengaluru and the complaints the law-enforcing agencies receive are rising at alarming levels. Children are kidnapped wherever they are found in precarious and vulnerable points.
Those children who have been kidnapped are often drugged or made to look malnourished to elicit sympathy while begging. Older children are pushed into forced labour, while infants are rented out to begging rings. Of the number 13,552 kidnapping cases since 2020, nearly 72% victims are girls. During mid-night o n the 31st of August, 2025, a seven-month-old baby boy was snatched from his sleeping mother’s side while sleeping on the footpath near Atal Bihari Vajpayee Medical College, Shivajinagar.
The child’s mother, 24year-old hailing from Namakkal, Tamil Nadu, had come along with her husband and infant son to sell wigs, balloons, and dolls at the St. Basilica Church fair. Exhausted after a long day selling the products, the family lay down to rest at around 3.30 AM, not aware of the horror which was about to unfold. Kamatchi recalls feeding her son, Naveen Kumar, minutes before she noticed unusual movements around her. When she wok up, she saw a gang of men lifting her baby. She rushed to stop them, screaming for help, but the men shoved her and her husband to the ground and escaped in an autorickshaw with the infant.
A complaint was filed at the Commercial Street Police Station for kidnapping under IPC Section 363 (kidnapping from lawful guardianship) was registered. Police thoroughly scanned CCTV footage in all the surrounding areas to track the abductors, but failed to get any clue. This is one among hundreds of kidnappings happening across the country. For example, in the month of May, 2025, an incident in Bengaluru, shook those who came to know. One-year-four-month boy Rohith, was abducted while sleeping beside his father Mukesh, a balloon seller from Rajasthan, outside Bowring and Lady Curzon Hospital.
Mukesh discovered his child missing at 2 A.M and frantically searched before approaching the police. Upon swift investigation and technical tracking led police to a woman beggar in Mysuru, who fled with the baby on a bus. She confessed to the crime, telling the police that she intended to use the child for begging. Both the cases occurred in Bengaluru, one child was found and other one is yet to be traced. Both the lifting happened near Shivajinagar—1) near a church and the other 2) near a Government Hospital.
Both the cases clearly indicates that there are child-lifters and child-lifting gangs are operating around that area. In tune to this, police and child rights activists caution that such incidents are not isolated, but part of an organized criminal network. Taking advantage of the vulnerability of children the child-lifters use different tactic. Children who have been kidnapped are drugged or deliberately made to look malnourished to elicit sympathy, while begging. Older children are pushed into forced labour at roadside stalls, in households, or even illegal trades. In some cases, children are ‘rented out’ among beggars to maximize earnings.
A senior police offer noted that these abductions reflect a disturbing trend of children who are being reduced to tools for easy money, toiling on footpaths, near hospital and traffic signals and fairs have become hotspots as migrant families with infants without any other option but to sleeping in such places where there is no protection and thus suspectable to vulnerability. The following data reflects the appalling conditions of the children that between 2020 and 2024, Karnataka recorded 12,790 child kidnapping cases, with 1,334 children untraced so far.
Majority do come from Bengaluru. A report highlights 14,878 missing cases of children during the same period, of which 1,336 remain unaccounted for, disproportionately girls, with 1,003 still missing when compared to 333 boys. Upon de-coding a separate tally reveals that 13,552 kidnapping cases since 2020, which is about 72%. Of the victims the majority happened to be which underscores the gendered nature of the crime. Besides kidnappings, child exploitation rackets keep growing.
In April 2024, a joint operation by Bengaluru police and the Child Welfare Committee rescued 47 minors, including infants under one year, from begging rings in Pulakeshi Nagar. Another shocking story on these lines is in the Kalyana Karnataka region 340 children were found begging for four years, many under the grips of organized criminals’ networks, despite the state spends Rs. 306 crores on relief centres and awareness programs. As cities and big towns attracts the migrant workers. They earn meagre wages and so find hard to stay in rentals roof and so sleep on the pavements, parks, railway stations, and others.
Child lifters use the children for begging which has now become lucrative business for the criminal gangs. Unorganized labour force who contributes to the development of cities and towns live in such pathetic and horrific conditions that offers no security for them as well their children. They migrate to cities not because of any attraction, but to satiate hunger in order to fill their stomachs, livelihood, and somewhat quality life which they dream. From micro to macro, we come across kidnapping of children and using them for different purposes would run to thousands and lakhs.
Across the country there are organized gangs running these criminal activities runs to millions of rupees. The most affected ones are the little children. Once they become captives that’s it. Whether they like it or not, eventually those little children move to such activities that tend to be criminal and toxic. For that to happen we are also responsible for not playing pro-active and supportive role with those who in different ways struggling to combat these gangsters and their activities. It should be borne in mind that because of our non-participatory and passive positions, those children have lost their childhood and now on sale.
As toddlers, babes, boys and girls they have all the right to go to be with their parents, play, eat, going to school and enjoying their childhood. The abducted children have lost their childhood who have become so vulnerable to all sorts of cruelties, and thus face violence, harshness, and living under such horrible and harsh settings Childhood is so important for one’s early formation especially in one mental, emotional, and bodily growth. This important component vis-à-vis children is being snapped-off, then what’s left in them. Let us not create binaries: ‘our children’ and ‘those children’, we should transcend from these binaries to another singular category ‘our children’.
Dr. John Mohan Razu
Monday, March 30, 2026