<i>Karwan Bazar's midnight children</i>
Four street children during early hours try to get on a vegetable-laden truck trundling on Kazi Nazrul Islam Avenue near Karwan Bazar wholesale market in the city.Photo: STAR
Silent tears were rolling down Popy's cheeks. In the darkness, you could only see the glistening lines. Her 12-year-old elder brother Shakil, tied to a bamboo pole, looked bewildered. Night egged on at Karwan Bazar vegetables depot. No-one even bothers to throw a glance at whatever was going on there.
"He's innocent," the eight-year-old girl protested weakly. "He did not steal vegetables."
In the twilight existence of the Karwan Bazar kids, they were just picking up whatever vegetables were littered around, she claimed. Just the scavengers. Not like the other children -- one would pause a minute before calling them 'thieves' -- who prowl the market by night, slash open sacks and take out whatever they can grab -- vegetables, onions, garlic -- you name it.
Shakil is not one of these 'thieves' -- their number might be 400 or even higher. But Nasima (not real name) is one for real. On Wednesday night, her luck was not that good -- she got caught while slashing open a gunnysack.
She did not receive any beating. But that did not mean she did not have to pay for her 'sins'. Several male hands groped for her body, molesting her. She did not protest. She just bore it. The faces of rickshaw-van-pullers and coolies looked grotesque in the shadows.
"Beasts! How happy they are to catch a girl thief!" she spitted on the ground in disgust as they let her go.
From a rickety room atop a vegetable depot, a thin screaming voice came. A child was squealing in terror. A 10-year-old boy was being punished there for stealing vegetables from a truck, the coolies said.
"The vegetables trader is molesting the kid," one of them commented, pulling a blank look.
Though Shakil, Nasima and the unnamed 10-year-old boy are well aware of the hazards of life at Karwan Bazar, they won't quit this 'occupation'.
Of the 400 thieves, 80 percent are under 12 and 40 percent are girls. Most of them live on footpaths and slums in Mirpur, Kafrul, Tejgaon Railway Station, Begunbari and Tongi. Some of them are drug addicts and homeless people from different parts of Dhaka.
Most of the women and children were abandoned by their husbands and fathers.
"My mother first sent us to pick up vegetables three months ago after my father stopped looking after us," Shakil, a class IV student, said, adding he had to drop out from school as well.
His mother Nazma Begum, a part-time domestic help, also picks up vegetables in between her duties. The father, Abul Hashem, who drives a school van, lives somewhere else.
Two groups of vegetables thieves are active during transporting vegetables to the market in trucks from across the country, unloading those on rickshaw-vans and taking those to the depots in between 10:00pm and 7:00am. One group cuts open the sacks and steal, while the other steals vegetables from those sacks later.
About 150 thieves involved in cutting sacks can take one to one and a half kilograms of vegetables at a time when the trucks wait in queue for unloading and rickshaw-van-pullers remain busy with their vans.
"If caught, those who cut sacks receive severe beating," Parul, a female coolie who lives on the footpath of Kazi Nazrul Islam Avenue, said, adding drug addicts from different parts of Dhaka and some sex workers are also involved in it.
While each of such thieves earns Tk 200-800 every night, members of the other category, who are more than 250 in number, earn Tk 50-200 each by selling their vegetables later on the footpath or to the vegetables traders.
Mostly kids aged between 6-12 years and some aged drug addicts are involved in poking the cut sacks to steal vegetables.
Most of such thieves are beaten several times a week and sexually assaulted sometimes.
"They assault us on any minor excuse. This bazaar is full of lechers," said an 11-year-old fair-complexioned girl from Pirerbagh in Mirpur who was forced to stealing, as her mother can't work for her waist problem. Losing her father about three years back, she has to run the family of her mother and younger brother.
"Apart from the traders, the coolies, rickshaw-van-pullers and some adult male thieves mainly sexually abuse the girls after catching them during the theft," Liton, a 40-year-old leader of thieves who is known as "Khukir Baap" (Khuki's father), told The Daily Star.
There is another group like Shakil who pick up vegetables that fell from vans while being carried to and from the depots.
Apart from young kids, poor women aged above 25 and kids of 5-10 years are mostly involved in such picking.
Many of them pick up half-rotten vegetables from the dustbin, cut off the rotten parts and sell those to restaurants.
Aklima Khatun, 30, of Begunbari engaged three of her six offspring in stealing after her truck driver husband Emdad Mirdha died two years ago.
"I have no alternative to engaging my kids to stealing. They are too young for other kind of jobs," she said, waiting near the Janata Tower Tuesday night when her sons Shafiqul, 12, Deen Islam, 11, and Shawon, 10 were depositing the stolen vegetables to her.
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