Indifference cost her childhood.

After seven years of confinement, Rupa Kumari is finally free. Back in 1998, little Rupa had loitered into a railway station without a platform ticket. She was promptly caught by the cops, produced before a magistrate and fined Rs 300. The girl didn't have the money, so she was sentenced to nine days in a detention centre. And that's where she stayed for seven years. Away from her known world, the child grew into a woman.

On a recent visit to the centre, Jharkhand's chief justice found her, initiated proceedings against the Bihar and Jharkhand governments and ensured her release.

But the girl has lost seven long years of her life in the detention centre. She lost her childhood. She lost her career too. Whom should she blame for it ? Her fate ? or some inhuman careless people ?

The older I grow the more earnestly I feel that the few joys of childhood are the best that life has to give. ~Ellen Glasgow