Father tried to sell his Slumdog Millionaire child-star

In general, don’t child actors end up messed up enough? How on earth do you get over knowing your father tried to sell you? I mean, what would Punky Brewster ^[1] have done? I am sure she would have had a lot of takers — and her parents would have walked away with way more than $300K.

It seems the father of child-star Rubina Ali ^[2] wanted to cash in while his daughter was still hot from Slumdog Millionaire ^[3]‘s Oscar win and tried to sell her for millions of rupees (or almost $300,000). She is nine years old.

On a tip from a concerned family member, reporters from Britain’s News of the World ^[4] posed as a wealthy family from Dubai and met with Rubina’s father and uncle. Are you kidding me? I am seriously not sure what is worse… all of the Americans in Nebraska dropping off their unwanted teenage kids ^[5] or selling your daughter to earn a buck. And to make matters worse, apparently this is something that happens a lot in India. In fact, BettyConfidential.com ^[6] found a Reuters ^[7]‘ article saying that “children in India are often sold for prices lower than livestock.”

I can say with 100% confidence that no matter how desperate my situation became I would never try to sell one of my kids (that is likely the norm, right?). There are a lot of people that struggle to survive — to just make ends meet — and I realize in some countries the conditions people live in and the resources people have for help are nil, but sell your kid? I wonder if Rubina’s father thought about her welfare at all? Did he seriously think a sale like this would go unnoticed? Maybe he didn’t care. I also wonder what would happen to the family if they lived here. The father would most certainly be arrested for endangering the welfare of a child, and probably a slew of other things, and Rubina would be put into foster care. Oh man… there is just no good end to this story.