Hyderabad:
Eight-year-old Rajitha stands before her class to recite a poem. For most children, this would be an ordinary moment. For Rajitha, it signals a break with the past. And the beginning of a normal childhood.
NDTV first met Rajitha in May in a government hospital in Mahabubnagar district in Andhra Pradesh. She weighed what a one-year-old should and lay battered in a hospital bed. She had been
sold by the man in charge of the orphanage where she lived to a family who used her as domestic help and regularly assaulted her.
NDTV viewers, surfers from ndtv.com, and Apollo Hospital in Hyderabad came together to help her. She now lives at a welfare home run by the government, and attends a school in the neighbourhood in Yousufguda.
(Read: Rajitha, 8, healthier and happier, thanks to you)Her arm, infected from earlier injuries by those who had "bought" her, has still not healed. And she is being treated for tuberculosis. But her eyes shine with pride and happiness as her classmates watch her recite her poem - like other children her age, her delivery is sing-song, but her confidence never wavers.
"She is a very intelligent and charming girl. If any couple wants to adopt, we would like to give her for adoption because ultimately when she is with the family, she will have a good career and future," says Usha Rani, the Director of the Woman and Child Welfare Department in Andhra Pradesh.
For adoption queries, please write to:C/O Director, Women and Child Welfare Dept,
Government of Andhra Pradesh
Yousufguda, Hyderabad