Some Children from SPYM’s Kingsway Camp Centre
Please note that all names have been changed to protect identity.
SAURABH
His family is considerably better off than of many others who are
admitted to the Kingsway Camp centre, in which most children come from indigent
households. Saurabh’s brother is a manager at a small call centre and his
mother sells cheap kitchenware. At home are also his father, who is bedridden,
and his grandfather.
Saurabh used mephedrone, smack and ganja. He would crush the
mephedrone crystals into a fine powder, and then snort it. The high the drug
gave him lasted for four to five hours. He also smoked up to seven packs of
smack in a single day. (Mephedrone is a synthetic stimulant, known as an
amphetamine and a cathinone, and was one of the first, new psychoactive
substances available on the international market.
Similar to ecstasy, mephedrone has distinctive emotional and social effects on
the user. A study published in the British Journal of Pharmacology suggests
that mephedrone use involves similar effects and hazards to MDMA, but that the
negative effects are potentially more severe.)
Saurabh got hooked on drugs when he was just 12-years-old and this
continued for the next five years. His dependence on expensive drugs drained
his income, and to sustain his craving he took to pick-pocketing for which, he
says, surgical blades served him well.
When provoked during ‘bad trips’ he sometimes became extremely
violent. He narrates an incident when he and his friend passed lewd comments on
a girl, who reacted strongly. “She grabbed my collar and started abusing me.
When she didn’t stop I pushed her down on the stairs and lunged at her with my
surgical blades. I also hit her when she resisted. It needed more than 16
stitches to close her wound,” he recalls, and admits to attacking up to 15
people with such blades.
After injuring the girl he ran for cover and hid in a friend’s
house. When police couldn’t find him they picked up his brother, but were soon
able to nab him as well. “I was heavily intoxicated when they found me and put
me in the lockup. When I became abusive they thrashed me badly and sent me to
the Juvenile Justice Board at Seva Kutir in Kingsway Camp,” he says.
Mephedrone and other amphetamines stimulate the central nervous
system (CNS) consisting of the brain and spinal cord. As the effect of such
drugs wane various physical and negative feelings set in, of which the person
has no control.
DHRUVA
Dhruva from Jahangirpuri smoked smack for a year. “All my friends
did it, so I too started,” he says. He says the drug aroused his curiosity, and
it did not take him long to succumb to the temptation. He liked the kick it
gave him and it was just a matter of time before addiction set in.
As his tolerance to the drug increased he started needing more and
more of the substance. “I would spend up to a thousand rupees every day. Smack
was widely accessible and sold by people, including women, living in and around
the jhuggis.”
Like many others he too took to petty crimes like snatching and
pick-pocketing to fund his high. Dhruva says he has so far attacked four people.
“Sometimes this was just to win acceptance from the street gangs. But we also
attacked people who offered resistance during the chain-snatchings. I always made
it a point to stab them in their thighs, or at most near the waist … never,
never in the abdomen. I didn’t want the person to die and land up with a murder
charge. I would always carry two small surgical blades with me,” he replies
grinning.
The cynical and casual way in which he describes these assaults
does not suggest there is much remorse in him, though when you ask he tries to
look contrite.
Dhruva would leave his home with his schoolbag, drop it at a
friend’s place, and along with two others head for a disused toilet or the
fields nearby. There they would smoke ganja and later smack.
He says he has two brothers who deal in “satta” (gambling) and
that he once attacked one of them with a brick.
Dhruva was first brought to the Prayas childcare centre, where he
claims he got beaten up. He says he intends becoming a volunteer for SPYM.
PRAMOD
Pramod, 17, from Almorah (Uttarakhand) claims that he helped a
friend sell off his mobile, and soon had the police knocking on his door. It
turned out that the mobile was a stolen one. His friend could not be traced,
and Pramod suspects that he ran away. He says the police did not believe his
story.
This boy is the only one here to claim innocence with regard to the
crime for which he has been booked for, though he admits to having smoked ganja
for over eight months.
Pramod’s mother ekes out a living by sweeping homes and helping
with housekeeping in their neighbourhood in Union Nagar. She is the family’s
sole bread earner, because his father is terminally ill and he himself spent
all his money on drugs. Half of the 5,000 rupees that his mother earns in a
month goes towards paying the rent.
Pramod also has a 21-year-old sister and two brothers younger to
him. He was admitted to the centre on 28 June this year.
Pramod says his mother knows that he is in Delhi, but she has
never been outside her locality and so there can be no meeting between them. He
says he still needs to serve three months of his probation, and that he plans
to resume his studies after he gets back to his home town. He has cleared the
ninth standard.
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