Father identifies 13-year-old mowed down by SP MLA’s son

LUCKNOW, APRIL 27 : Prehlad Kumar came all the way from Itrauri village on the Bahraich-Shravasti border on Sunday, only to have his worst fears confirmed. The 13-year-old who was one of the four to be mowed down by a speeding Tata Safari driven by an MLA’s son in Lucknow on Saturday and who nobody could identify was his son Sonu.

The boy had come to the city looking for work, and the Rs 400 he sent home every month went a long way towards keeping his family afloat. The grieving Kumar, still not able to believe that the youngest of his four sons was dead, can’t imagine how Sonu came to be on the pavement and under the wheels of Samajwadi

Party MLA Shadab Fatima’s son Kasif Abbas’s car. Particularly as, according to Kumar, Sonu worked as a domestic help in the house of a Congress leader.

“I have lost everything. Sonu worked as a domestic help in the house of the Congress leader, and earned Rs 400 every month. Since he used to get food and lodging at the leader’s house, he would send the entire amount to us. Rest of my three sons work on a small field. Considering our economic status, Sonu had decided to leave the village around two and a half years ago and started working in Singh’s house. It was his son’s wedding on April 25. Sonu was supposed to be there. I don’t know what was he doing on the pavement,” said Kumar, after identifying his son’s body at the CSMMU mortuary.

Incidentally, the Congress leader was present at the mortuary and even paid for Sonu’s body to be ferried home. However, he refused that he knew Sonu or that the boy ever worked at his home.

Employing anybody below the age of 14 years is illegal under the Child Labour (Prohibition and Regulation) Act.

While Kumar initially kept insisting that Sonu had been working in the Congress leader’s house for more than two years, he later...