The Kerala Police’s Crime Branch has intensified its investigation into the recent incident of trafficking of hundreds of children from Jharkhand, Bihar and West Bengal to orphanages in Kerala run by Muslim outfits following reports that organised rackets are operating in this sector in those States even as one more ‘agent’ was held in connection with the incident on Friday.
The mystery over child-trafficking has deepened with the confiscation of Aadhaar cards with false information from some of the children brought from Maldah, a West Bengal district bordering Bangladesh. Sources in the police said they were worried about this in the particular context of large-scale illegal crossing of Bangladeshis into Indian territory.
The addresses given in the Aadhaar cards recovered from some of the children, who were brought to Palakkad from West Bengal to be taken to an orphanage in Muslim-majority Malappuram district, were of Kerala, suggesting malpractice. “This is a very serious matter,” said a top police official.
The identity cards issued to the children by the Anwar’ulhuda Orphanage Complex at Vettathur, Malappuram to where they were brought showed their native place as Maldah but the addresses given in their Aadhaar cards were of Vettathur. Police officials said they were yet to find out how children from West Bengal were possessing Aadhaar cards with Kerala addresses.
The Railway Protection Force at Palakkad since May 24 had detained 589 children of 4-to-14 age group as they were being brought to orphanages run by Muslim outfits in Kozhikode and Malappuram. Many of these children did not have the required documents issued by their respective Governments. Eight people were arrested on that day in this connection.
Information gathered by the Crime Branch from the people arrested in the case and reports from Jharkhand, revealed that rackets with huge networks, offices and field agents were operating there for canvassing children to be brought to the Muslim orphanages in Kerala.
The police have learned that some of those already arrested had connection with such offices and that some of them had been working as teachers in the educational institutions run by Muslim orphanages. They had got most of this information from the children themselves, who were brought from Jharkhand to the orphanages.
It is also said that the middlemen operating for the orphanages had taken children to Kerala by paying sums like Rs 1,500 to each parent. Also, several parents had reportedly paid the middlemen thinking that their children would get quality education, good boarding facilities and good food in the orphanages of Kerala.
The police on Friday arrested Shafeeq Sheikh, a native of Jharkhand, who had connections with the Muslim Orphanage at Mukkom, Kozhikode. It was to this institution that majority of the children who were detained on May 24 at Palakkad Railway Station were being brought. He had been playing a vital role in the child-trafficking operations for the past three years, sources said.
With the arrest of Sheikh, the total number of persons held in connection with the alleged child-trafficking incident rose to 10. The police had on Thursday arrested another Jharkhand native, Shakeel Akhtar, for working as an agent canvassing children in his home State for the Mukkom orphanage.
Shakeel, who had been working at a stone quarry in central Kerala, had brought 80 children from Jharkhand in 2011 and 150 children in 2012 to the orphanage in Mukkom. Shakeel had accompanied the children who were brought last month to the orphanage where his wife was working.