What Will it be Sir, a Buffalo or something Cheap, like a Child?

Reuters reports that, umh, creative entrepreneurs are selling children in India… and they’re not expensive!

“Children are purchased like buffaloes,” said Bhuvan Ribhu of Bachpan Bachao Andolan (Save the Childhood Movement), quoting a study that is due to be released later this year.

He went on to say that “while buffaloes may cost up to 15,000 rupees ($350), children are sold at prices between 500 and 2,000 rupees ($12 and $45)”.

For instance, two brothers in Bihar were recently given away for 250 rupees ($6) each by their parents and trafficked out of the state in connivance with police, Ribhu said.

The group estimates that children account for 40 to 50 percent of all victims of human trafficking. They are sold to work as domestic laborers, or in the carpet industry, on farms or as commercial sex workers.

Sadly, the police isn’t doing enough against it either since “the traffickers-police connection was so strong in some parts of the country that traffickers scout freely and children rescued from brothels and bonded labor were often victims again.”

This is truly horrible.