Heartache for India's new rich as brutal kidnappers target their children

gang rescue asylum prey on wealthy families. They know that the police are ineffective and desperate parents paid, but children still die often torn

The last image of the family Yash Lakhotia have of him was taken at the mall, most middle-class destinations in India. It shows smiling with his arm around her older sister, Neha. Both are using smart Western clothes, looking the epitome of the new in the country, generating upward mobility.

But a look that Yash cost him his life. Two days after the photograph was taken, a car stopped on the seven school years, he left. Yash must have assumed that within the man had been sent by his father to pick it up. He entered, closed the door, and he was gone.

Neighbors found his body three days later dumped in bushes near the waterfront in Howrah, the twin city of Kolkata. It was just another victim of the growing industry of kidnapping in India.

As the booming economy and millions to make the leap from poverty into the ranks of the new middle class has seen a corresponding increase in kidnapping against ransom as they feel a part of the research differed booty.

insurers rank India as the fifth most dangerous country in the world for kidnapping, with a strong warning to the United States last month that the West is now considered white.

In May, the Indian National Commission of Human Rights estimates that 60,000 children disappear each year in the country, less than a third are found. Some are made to work in factories or end up as beggars, but the figures for the Delhi Police show that the kidnapping against ransom is increasing. In 2008, there were 1233 cases in the capital last year had risen to 2975. In the first three months of 2011, 802 cases were recorded.

with the police are often slow to react and wealthy parents willing to pay, removal must be a money maker quick and easy. Instead, it's a lottery, because often the perpetrators of panic and kill their hostages - a cruel irony that Lakhotias discovered the hard way

"I used to try to scare you, to laugh," said Anil Lakhotia, father Yash, as he cried in a coffee shop on the corner of busy. His shoulders shook, her face in her hands, added: "I can not imagine how I was scared when he arrived, and I was not there for him everyone wants to protect their children, but been unable to .. you can not protect all the time you have to let them out,.? have to leave to go to school, is not it "

Anil

across the river from Calcutta to succeed in the business 24 years ago. As the reputation of his business has grown, as the wealth of the family. And so does the desire of those who have not been as successful.

One day in 2009, Yash left home for school at 7 am, get a lift in the taxi always shared. It would have been collected at 14 hours, but never arrived home. Anil called the car company, who told him that someone had already chosen the child when the driver arrived.

"I suddenly realized that this was an abduction case," said Anil, 41. "I thought it would only have to pay the ransom and return. The money means a lot to us, but now I was ready to sell my house, everything. "

inside the house, everyone was crying. Yash sister, Neha, now 12, returned from school and went to find the place in chaos.

• Anil ran to school, then at the police station near Balli, where he met his suffering with a shrug. "[The agent] was a bum, a normal font. He was reluctant to complain. He said the boy must have misplaced it somewhere. "
• at nightfall, the family went to pray, not only in Hindu temple regularly, but also to the local mosque, desperate for any help I could find. Late into the night, Anil walked the streets. In the end, had to admit defeat. "He had a phone and my number. He would have known if he was lost, simply," said Anil.

The next morning the police to a suspect, a well-known local criminal. They have circulated his picture, but it was a mistake. The kidnappers panicked. Neighbors found the body of Yash is lying in the bushes near the shore. He was in his school uniform, with a mark on her neck where she had been strangled, and dried blood around the nose.

"He was only seven and a half years," said Anil. "Every parent has dreams that his son will grow up and take responsibility and take charge of things. But I'm completely lost, my dreams are broken. I have no other plans to expand my business, and it would be for? "

What's the story so terrible Lakhotias not happen to a child, it happens all the time. There were two cases in Delhi in December, along with ransom demands of £ 20,000 and £ 1,300. The two young men were killed. The following month there was another in the capital, with the boy who killed himself because his father would not pay the ransom of 545 pounds.