Do you remember the film Slumdog Millionaire?

While the story centres around a teenager from the slums of Mumbai taking part in a game show to win a fortune, it is a part of his backstory that hits the hardest.

As a child, the protagonist, Jamal Malik, played by Dev Patel, and his brother are forced to survive on the streets after their mother is killed during the Bombay riots. The brothers, along with another child, are found by Maman—a gangster who trains and disables children to become more "effective" beggars. The money the children collect rarely belongs to them.

The reality Jamal faced under Maman's control is not fiction for hundreds of thousands of children across this subcontinent. It is their daily existence. A reality we routinely ignore, even as these children reach out for help on our streets.

Just last Friday, a six-year-old boy was found unconscious beside a man at the Rupsha Ferry Ghat in Khulna. The man, later identified as 30-year-old Rafikul Islam Biplob, had been begging with the child by his side. The boy had gone missing from his home six months earlier. During that period, he was starved, tortured, and paraded across cities as a "disabled" child—his fingers broken to elicit pity and money.

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Why Bangladesh needs a child affairs reform commission

How many more children need to be broken—literally broken—before we, as a region and as a people, say "enough"?

Across South Asia, children are trafficked, crippled, and discarded—all so someone can pocket loose change from your car window.

There is no justification for this. No cultural nuance, no economic hardship makes it morally defensible. It is a grotesque violation of every human right, every shred of decency we claim to uphold.

So how does it continue?

The answer lies in a lethal mix of systemic failure and societal apathy. Law enforcement agencies are often ill-equipped, under-resourced, or simply unwilling to pursue trafficking networks. Some officials turn a blind eye; others are complicit. Traffickers pose as guardians, and without proper documentation or welfare checks, they go unquestioned. It is easier to dismiss a begging child as a sad by-product of poverty than to recognise them as the victim of a brutal, organised enterprise.

Cultural and religious practices are also manipulated. The sacred act of giving alms, deeply ingrained in the spiritual traditions of this region, has been hijacked by criminals. In Pakistan, shrines are often surrounded by children in chains, framed as holy recipients of charity. In India and Bangladesh, infants drugged with sedatives are carried from car to car by adult beggars. People give, believing it to be a spiritual duty, unaware that their kindness may be feeding a monstrous trade in human suffering.

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Keeping children under parental care must be a top priority

Let us call this what it is: a systematised, industrial-scale operation of child torture. Not poverty. Not misfortune. Not fate. This is organised crime, and we are complicit every time we choose to turn away from the real situation.

The traffickers? Undeniably monstrous. But what about the governments that know—have known for decades—this is happening and still fail to act with urgency or resolve?

The laws exist. Bangladesh has the Prevention and Suppression of Human Trafficking Act. India has the Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Act. Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka have similar frameworks.

But laws that are not enforced are as good as non-existent. Cases stagnate. Survivors are lost in bureaucratic mazes. Traffickers roam free. The systems are there, but they are deliberately neglected—because corruption is easier than compassion. Because law enforcement can be bought. Because it is more convenient to celebrate GDP growth than to admit the streets are being lined with the wreckage of children's lives.

So, what must be done?

We need national task forces with real authority, capable of investigating and prosecuting trafficking networks instead of simply releasing statements to the press. Law enforcement must be retrained, monitored, and held to account. A child found begging should not be ignored—it should trigger an immediate welfare investigation, including medical and forensic checks to determine their true situation and who is responsible for it.

South Asian nations must share intelligence and cooperate across borders. Trafficking is transnational; our response must be so as well. Regional platforms such as SAARC must evolve beyond rhetoric and move into action—joint raids, extradition protocols, shared databases. No one country can fight this alone. It is a regional emergency with global implications.

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Children must be protected from abuse and torture

Rehabilitation must stop being an afterthought. A few nights in a shelter will not undo years of trauma. Survivors require long-term, trauma-informed care—counselling, education, and reintegration into society. They need governments that show they care not just in words, but in action.

Public awareness campaigns must boldly state the truth: giving money to a child on the street may be fuelling abuse, not alleviating it. People must be taught to recognise the signs of trafficking and to report them. Most importantly, we must be taught to stop looking away when it comes to child beggars.

Because right now, we are failing our children. Every child left on the streets, every child mutilated for sympathy, is a stain on our collective conscience. We cannot call ourselves civilised, just, or faithful if we allow this to continue.

South Asia must rise, not with more policies, not with more headlines, but with action. With anger. With unshakable resolve. Because this is not just about poverty or crime. This is about who we are.

And if we do not stop this now, we are no better than the monsters who do this. Will we finally choose to be better?

Naziba Basher is a journalist at The Daily Star.

Views expressed in this article are the author's own.

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