Giving a new twist to the long-drawn controversy haunting the State-run shelter home for women in distress, a senior district administrative official said that Nari Niketan which came up in 2007 at Kedarpuram of Nehru Colony in Dehradun was not originally meant for the mentally challenged women to reside in. However, a few months after it came up, it was decided that the mentally challenged women would be enrolled too along with other distressed women who have no history of mental illness.
Subsequently, around 100 mentally challenged women were enrolled there. “But the State Government did nothing to revamp its infrastructure by way of raising its staff and recruiting doctors for the shelter home,” the officer said.
The home in Dehradun was formed for the minor girls who committed crimes or those who had gone missing from their homes or those who were persecuted by their husbands. Before it came into existence, some small sized shelter-homes were in Dehradun and in some other parts of the State. Finally, as the number of mentally challenged women, bereft of a proper place to stay in, rose in the State the State Government had decided to enroll all such women in the Kedarpuram-based shelter home. However, facilities were not improved accordingly.
Things remained grim there. Around 100 inmates lived in Nari Niketan with around half a dozen employees left to take care of them. Moreover, fund crunch haunting it, the mentally ill inmates were not being provided with sufficient food. They had no right clothes nor were there the right toilet facilities for them. They used to relieve themselves in the places where they slept.
Besides, there was no specialist to take care of their medical needs. language being a bar as many of the inmates were from non-Hindi-speaking States, the medical checkups were held just by way of formality.
As per the norms, one employee is kept for one or two mental patients in a mental hospital. But here four or five employees were left to cater to around 100 mentally ill inmates. It is clear that the social welfare department officials had left the State Government in the dark for long over the sordid state of things haunting the home. “It was thus quite natural some inmates died and others were taken ill, as they all suffered acute mal-nutrition. Moreover, the bitter and prolonged cold affected them as they had no woollen to keep themselves warm,” says an observer. However, now, things are looking up. At least, the State Government claims so.