Boy tied to bus stop highlights struggle for disabled Indians

Indian boy Lakhan Kale is tied with a cloth rope around his ankle, to a bus-stop pole in Mumbai.-AFP

MUMBAI: The nine-year-old boy dressed in blue lay listlessly on the pavement in the scorching Mumbai summer afternoon, his ankle tethered with rope to a bus stop, unheeded by pedestrians strolling past.

Lakhan Kale cannot hear or speak and suffers from cerebral palsy and epilepsy, so his grandmother and carer tied him up to keep him safe while she went to work, selling toys and flower garlands on the city's roadsides.