I watched the movie 'Changeling'. The Angeline Jolie-starrer shows a woman whose nine-year-old son goes missing one day from their home in Los Angeles. The LA police department, notorious for its brutality and corruption, sends her another boy to pass off as her son, to cover up their inefficiency. It later turns out her son was brutally killed by a serial murderer in the time that lapsed.

This true story, that took place in the USA around 1928, was uncannily similar to another, ver recent, very gruesome episode in our own country - the Nithari killings. Of course, the Nithari case was somehow more brutal, because there were around 31 instead of 20 victims found buried near the murderer's house, and there were even suspicions of cannibalism. But then the crux of both stories that hit me the most, is the plight of those poor parents who, despite repeated complaints to police and local authorities, never managed to locate their missing children for so many years, only to find them dead later.

I dont really know how the situation is in the USA now, but I think I can safely assume that cases like this would be fairly rare. Even in India, an episode of the magnitude of the Nithari killings may not be common, but what is very common is the total negligence of the police when it comes to dealing with complaints, be it a run-of-the-mill robbery, missing persons or a full-scale murder. What shakes me up most of all is the ridiculously low value attached to human life in this country. I mean, the parents of those children were poor, with no money or access to political power. Monindher Singh Pandher, on the other hand, was affluent and had plenty of political connections. These did not save him from capital punishment only because of the sheer magnitude of the killings and the tremendous media attention the case received. Otherwise, I'm fairly certain a man of his "status" would never have been brought to book. In fact, it would have been the poor people who would be blamed, like the father of the call girl Payal, who was insulted by the police when he tried to fight for his daughter's case. The web of greed, adultery and corruption is so twisted, that the only way out is to feed it with more money and power. There is no space or respect left anymore for the common man. Sorry for the cynical outlook, but more often than not, thats how it is in our country.

The most common argument in the police's defence is that in a population as massive as our's, its not humanly possible to look into each and every case. But when so many innocent children have to face brutal death at the hands of a paedopilic psychopath, just because the police refused to move their lazy butts and investigate their own neighbourhood , all these arguments just fall by the wayside, don't they?