Noida Killing: A story of marginalisation of migrants

“Our life had become a nightmare for the past two years when children and women started vanishing form the region quite mysteriously. We had no other option but to wait and hope for the well-being of our lost one,” said Mukesh Das, a rickshaw puller from Bihar but have been living in Nithari village of sector 31 Noida for the past six years.
The Nithari village till few years back was a safe haven for these thousands of immigrant labourers coming mainly from Bihar, West Bengal, and Nepal, who had stayed in this village and mostly worked as domestic help, rickshaw puller, factory labourers, and other such menial jobs.
But of late these people became the worst sufferers in this gruesome saga of missing children and women. It was reported by some villagers that the around more than 70 percent of the total people lost from the region, belongs to the group of these immigrant labourers.
Subash Pal, who had migrated to this place from Lalgola, a small village in the district of Malda, West Bengal, some 15 years back, said: “We are poor and mostly all of the senior family members have to go to work, leaving the kids at home. These kids became the easy target of the cold-blooded assassins of the D-5 bungalow,” lamented the sixty years old, Pal.
The Nithari gram pradhan, Ashok Pradhan said about the large settlement of such immigrant labourers in the village, who are staying here since the last fifteen years. He also confirmed, “It is true that out of the total bodies identified from the spot, more than 60 percent were found to be the bodies of children, whose family members have moved into the village from different parts of the country, especially Bengal.”
Walk into these dusty bylanes of this village and almost every dingy matchbox-sized home here has some ugly stories to narrate about kids and women vanishing suspiciously from the region.
For instance, life has been shattered of Aloki Halder and Gopal Halder of West Bengal whose 13-year-old daughter, Bina became one of the victim of the psychopath Moninder Singh Pandher and and his partner-in- crime, Surendra Kohli.
Similarly, one and half year old son of Payel (20) would never be able to get the motherly affection in his life, because his mother too had fallen prey to the perverts. Payel, used to work as a domestic help in a house in Noida, she was living in the village for the past 17 years.
These are the few stories where missing people have been identified by the police out of their remains fished out from the drain of Moninder’s house but there are several other such missing cases of the poor villagers whose family members are just waiting for their loved ones to return home safely.
The incident of such poor immigrants becoming the prey of a serial killer, explains a senior psychologist of Vidya Sagar Institute of Mental Health and Neuro Science, Dr Jitendra Nagpal. He says that the people belonging to the lower economic strata of the society are very vulnerable and easily gullible by such serial killers.
“A psychopaths can read the mindset of the economically poor people and especially juveniles, who can be taken into confidence much easily then a person who is educated and economical sound,” Dr Nagpal adds.
He also stated that in other such cases of serial killing in the country, the most vulnerable lot has always been children and people from lower economical strata of the society. (EOM)