A woman in Daska tehsil of Sialkot recently sold her newborn son for Rs 20,000. The incident took place in Ranghai village in Bambanwala police precincts. Misbah Bibi told reporters that she got married to Bilal around 15 years ago, but he turned a drug addict and stopped earning anything for the family. She said making ends meet got difficult with the passage of time and she suffered not only poverty, but also frequent beating of her addict husband. “My husband has been a heroin addict for years and we don’t see him for weeks on end,” she said. “I recently started working as a sweeper at several houses in my community, but i still couldn’t make ends meet,” she added. Misbah said her other three children were starving and she could no longer see them suffer.
“I spent months trying to keep them clothed and fed, but we are desperate and it is hard to even afford a meal a day for my family,” she said. Misbah said she had even contemplated suicide but she didn’t have the courage to leave her children alone. She said his parents had passed away and her brothers could also not support her as they were poor. Misbah said she sold her son for his bright future, because she could not sustain them by working as a housemaid. President of an NGO said even if poor, parents did not have a right to sell their children. “There is a dire need for evolving a mechanism to save our society from originating culture of child sale in its new form and all other conventional forms,” the NGO president said.
