This incident happened three days ago. My son had just returned from school in the afternoon and we were settling down to have our lunch when the doorbell rang. I opened the door to find my maid in an agitated state with a few other people clustered around a courier boy. She was holding on to the courier boy (a young boy of about 16-17 years old) and was trying to keep him from getting into the elevator.

On seeing this commotion, I asked her to explain what was going on, and she told me that the courier boy had been misbehaving with her two daughters aged 8 years and 10 years respectively and with two other girls who were their friends. One of them was 5 years old. The girls in question were also standing there and were looking very upset and crying. Seeing the girls, I realized that something serious has happened, and so asked her to calm down and tell me exactly what happened.

In the meantime, the courier boy was trying to make excuses, and make good his escape in the elevator, but my maid blocked his way and made sure he couldn’t move from there. She then proceeded to tell me the details of what happened.

Apparently, the courier boy, under the pretext of trying to find the correct address, asked the girls for directions. The girls had gone down to the local store and were on their way back home and just coming up the elevator, when the courier boy also got into it with them.

Once inside the elevator, he started talking to the girls (four of them) and then also began fondling one of the girls and tried to mo!est her. When the other girls objected to his actions, he started fingering them too. They then got out of the lift and tried to get away, but he followed them to the staircase behind, which is generally quite isolated. Here he continued with his mo!estation of my maid’s daughter who is 8 years old. She struggled and managed to get away, and cried for help. In the meantime, my maid came out and realized something was going on and caught the courier boy.

I understood that this guy had been up to no good. So, asked him for the name and address for the firm where he was employed. I took the delivery sheet from his hands and told him to stay there, while I made a call. I went inside the house to the telephone to make a call to our local police for help. The boy, now starting to feel trapped and under threat of being caught, followed me inside and tried to tell me that the phone number written on the sheet was no good. He would give me another number to call. I was still trying to connect to the police, and had just got through when the boy cut the phone.

This really got me mad. I told him to go out and wait there while I made the call. He kept trying to snatch the sheet from my hands, but I held on to it and told my maid to take him out physically, which she did. I then managed to contact the security people and told them to look out for this boy and to not allow him to go out. That done, I then turned to find that the guy had run away. Well, I still had his sheet with me and knew he wouldn’t be able to go back to his boss without it.

As matters turned out, the police apprehended him and there he confessed to his misdeeds after some treatment. We all went to give our statements and identify him as the culprit. We found out that his boss had brought him back so he could be punished, and besides he also wanted his delivery sheet back.

To sum things up, we let him go without registering a case for a number of reasons. One, the civil police would take its own sweet time to register the case, take statements from all, and then we would have to go through the whole “legal” proceedings which would take years together. Two, The police are also notorious for making money from all parties concerned. Three, The boy was not even 18 years old, and so he couldn’t be put in the lock up. He would have been sent to a worse place, which would have probably turned him into a proper hard-core criminal. Four, The courier company would have to be shut down for employing a boy under age (The Child Labor Act).

The boss of the courier company had enough to worry about. So, we negotiated with him to compensate the two families who were affected and let them go. I made the boy apologize to the two mothers and explained to him that this was one chance he was getting to change his ways and choose a better future for himself.

I don’t know if he will change his ways or not. But, I felt we ought to give him a chance before ruining his life altogether. He was only 17 years old! Maybe, (I am being optimistic here) this was just the first time he tried to do something like that, I don’t know and can’t know. But, well, I have hope…..!

What do you think?