Today's Sunday Times in India carries an interview with the 17 year old girl who has accused UP Member of the Legislative Assembly, PN Dwivedi and his men of raping her at his house where she worked as a maid servant. On a complaint of theft from Dwivedi's son local police locked her up for 15 days which, naturally, makes forensic proof of rape impossible. Earlier she is reported to have demanded Rs. 5 million as compensation from the government but claimed to have forgotten that in the interview as her brain is not working. Earlier she had also demanded that the MLA be hanged but now wants him to receive the same punishment as he would if he had raped the daughter of a rich man. She keeps harping on her poverty as the cause for rape and expresses a desire to be educated. The whole interview seems contrived and not spontaneous from an illiterate 17 year old. Is someone coaching her hoping to make money out of her horrible ordeal? People have sunk to such levels of depravity that such a situation would not be at all surprising. What about the law on child labor? Why did her father send a vulnerable teenager to work as a maid servant? Poverty cannot be an excuse for parents to abuse their own children. Giving birth does not convey ownership. In every city in India we see women begging with a scrawny baby dangling from their arms as they try to emotionally blackmail us into giving money to feed the hungry baby. Poor people breed with the intention of exploiting their children and until this is punished we will never be rid of poverty. Children must have rights and the first right must be the right not be born.