According to Nepal-based Esther Benjamin Memorial Foundation, eight Nepali children have been rescued from an Indian circus. The foundation has safely kept them in its child home in Hetauda, a city in central Nepal.
The children now rescued were about to be sold to Rainbow Circus in the Indian State of Gujarat. Kirte Bahadur Tamang, who was arrested red-handed, was going to sell them.
The age range of the rescued children is from 12 to 18.
Most of them belong to Mangolian family background.
The Foundation currently homes about 168 children rescued from the circuses. They benefit from food, shelter, clothing, education and health services on humanitarian grounds.
Dozens of Nepali children are illegally exported to Indian circus companies through local brokers with a political nexus.
Due to a high level impunity in Nepal, criminal gangs find the country a paradise.
Girl trafficking in is another illegal industry smoothly going on. An estimated two hundred thousand Nepali women and girls are in various Indian brothels, especially in Bombay and Calcutta.
Nepal’s head of state or prime minister, while visiting India, has never raised this issue at top level.
Among the children sold to circus companies, girls growing into adults are again more likely to be the victims who are re-sold to brothels.
No strategy at Nepal’s state level on this issue has been apparent at present.