TUMKUR: With the escape of two minor girls from the brutal treatment by their employers, a racket involving “sale” of poor children to rich families seems to have emerged. The neglected Poor House (PH) Colony here, from where the girls were first “sold”, could be the hub of the racket. The two minor girls, who escaped from the clutches of their “owners” in Bangalore, narrated their agony here on Friday.One Shaheena Begum, who was married to Arif Pasha, a labourer, was widowed one-and-a-half years ago. The couple had five children, including three girls. Soon, Shaheena remarried an autorickshaw driver and felt the five children were a burden. Through an agent, she and her mother Tahera found wealthy “takers” in Bangalore for her three girls.She sold Afsana Banu (17), Shaheeda Banu (14) and Asma Banu (12) to three different families for amounts ranging between Rs 18,000 and Rs 20,000.Her sons Roshan Pasha (10) and Amzad Pasha (8) could not bear their mother’s torture and lived with their paternal grandmother Khairunnisa at Goods Shed Colony near the Tumkur railway station.Shaheeda Banu escaped from her employers and returned to Goods Shed Colony last week and on Friday, her younger sister Asma too joined her.Showing bruises all over their bodies, the girls said their “owners” locked the girls up in the house when they went out.“They used to brand us with the heating iron for the most trivial reasons,” said Asma. The children neither knew anything about their “owners” nor the locality in Bangalore they were sent to. They are not sure where their 17-year-old elder sister is working in Bangalore.Activist Syed Altaf, who fights for the rights of slum dwellers, brought the issue to light and urged the administration to conduct a probe and trace the elder sister.Superintendent of Police T R Suresh told Express that there were rumours about the sale of children and said he would look into this incident and take action.
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