Recently, a video went viral showing three young children, no older than twelve or thirteen, sitting at the back of an open truck. An influencer approaches them and offers them chocolates. While the two younger children eagerly grab them, the third girl hesitates. She stretches out her hand, then suddenly pulls it back.
“It is not drugged. Is it?” she asks. Before the influencer can respond, she asks another question, “You won’t kidnap us, will you?” The influencer ruffles her hair and promises that he won’t. She hurriedly takes the chocolate from him and overwhelmed with relief and fear, she says crying, “Please don’t kidnap us.” The influencer continues to promise her that he is a good man, and the girl continues to cry while eating the chocolate.
His assurance does not seem to comfort her. Perhaps she is just a child who has never received a chocolate this expensive without a price attached to it. Or perhaps she already knows something that many adults refuse to acknowledge: that sometimes the people who arrive with sweets, promises, and friendly smiles can be the most dangerous of all.
Yet she takes the chocolate. Not because she trusts him. Not because she believes him. But because children are often forced to make impossible calculations between fear and hope, danger and survival. And somewhere in that brief exchange lies a disturbing truth about childhood in our society: Too many children have learned to ask not whether someone is kind, but whether they will harm them while showing kindness.
The latest National Crime Records Bureau says that there were 98,375 missing children in 2024 that were reported. Many of these children must have fallen for a chocolate, a smile or a promise, and even as we discuss here, many of them would have already endured an imaginable amount of pain and torture that would outlive their lives, and definitely their childhood.
Dig a little deeper and the NCRB reports reveal that of all the reported child sexual abuse cases, close acquaintances and known individuals accounted for 97% of the cases. So what do we do? How do we make sure that the ones the children trust the most do not end up robbing them of their trust in the goodness of the world and the sense of security?
The answer cannot be to teach children to fear every stranger while ignoring the dangers that often exist much closer to home. Child safety begins with creating environments where children feel empowered to speak, question, refuse, and report without fear of punishment, shame, or disbelief. It requires parents, teachers, communities, and institutions to move beyond superficial conversations about “good touch” and “bad touch” and instead build relationships where children know that their voice matters and that they will be heard when something feels wrong.
At the same time, the responsibility cannot rest on children alone. The burden of protection belongs to adults. Every missing child report must be treated as an emergency. Every allegation of abuse must be taken seriously. Every school, neighbourhood, workplace, and institution must recognise that safeguarding children is not an optional responsibility but a collective duty.
In an Association for Voluntary Action judgment in 2013, the Supreme Court had made it clear that every missing child must be treated as a potential victim of trafficking and every such complaint must lead to immediate registration of FIR. Once again, earlier this year the apex court has once again repeated these points, given guidelines and emphasised that a missing child must be acted upon immediately.
But between the legal framework and guidelines and their implementation and absorption on ground remain huge. The children go missing everyday and even as the numbers shake us momentarily, the normalcy steps in almost immediately.
Perhaps that is why the little girl’s words should linger long after the video ends. “You won’t kidnap us, will you?” No child should have to ask that question before accepting a chocolate. No child should grow up carrying such fear. A society that truly values its children is not one where children learn to navigate danger on their own, but one where they can accept a simple act of kindness without wondering whether it comes with a hidden cost
Disclaimer
Views expressed above are the author’s own.
