Masters lock 13-year-old in room

Masters lock 13-year-old in room

By Bishnu Prasad Aryal

KATHMANDU, Feb. 14: For 13-year-old Rajesh Shrestha, any day off from school is agonizing. On such days, he is kept locked inside a room every time his masters go out.

"Except for the school hours and when the masters are at home, they lock me inside a room as a prisoner," the boy said with tears rolling down his cheeks. He says this started about two months back. But his neighbours say this has been going on long before that.

Rajesh works in a house at Balkhu where Yam Prasad Kadariya, his wife Nutan and son Sanjaya live with another family of Sushma Regmi and her husband. Nutan and Sushma are sisters. The husbands are engineers by profession, while the wives teach in schools.

Rajesh studies in Class III at the local Jana Vikash Lower Secondary School. When he is not locked inside a room, he does all the household chores - cleaning dishes, scrubbing floors and running errands. Except for two square meals a day and some clothing, he has not been paid since coming here, he said.

"I want to study, but I am mostly absent from school because I must work till late in the morning. Because of this, I am often scolded at school."

Sometimes he goes out of the house to play with friends. That is the only consolation in his otherwise miserable days.

Rajesh comes from a landless family in Biratnagar. His mother died after consuming low quality, spurious liquor that come in pouches. He does not know when his mother died.

Back home he has a father, two sisters and a younger brother who live in a rented room. The sisters also work in a shop in Biratnagar, where they do washing and cleaning.

His father Lal Bahadur is a bus driver on the Biratnagar-Kathmandu route. "His behaviour changed after my mother died. Sometimes he would love us, but often he was angry and would beat me with an iron rod," Rajesh said. "One day, in a fit of rage he told me to get out of the house and not to return for 20 years."

Taking pity on the boy, Bhupendra Rijal, a neighbour proposed that he go to Kathmandu and work for his daughters.

He has not seen his family since he came to Kathmandu two years ago. Although his father regularly drives to Kathmandu, he has not come to meet him even once. Rajesh fears his family might have forgotten him.

Neighbours say that the Rijal sisters do not get along very well. This has made the life of Rajesh even more miserable.

Kadariya is an engineer at the Roads Department at Dhankuta. 'Uncle' Kadariya beats me with a rubber-pipe and an iron chain that is used to tie up dogs when I make the slightest mistake and at other times for no reason, says Rajesh. Showing bruises and blue marks on his wrist and face, he said he is also kicked and slapped.

"Sushma once struck me on the head with a ladle while she was cooking."

Kadariya, however, denied beating the boy. But he accepted locking up the boy. "We lock both Sanjaya and Rajesh in separate rooms should they go out and loiter in the streets," he said.
But Rajesh said that he faces the ordeal almost every day. "I sometimes make mistakes, but they are not intentional. But I don't think beating will correct the mistakes."

He said that he had even thought of running away from the house, but he has nowhere to go. "At times they threaten to send me to Biratnagar, where I do not want to go," he said.

This article was published in The Rising Nepal on February 15, 2003.