In a positive development for the crisis-ridden State-run shelter home for women in distress, Nari Niketan, located at Kedarpuram (Nehru Colony) in Dehradun, the family members of an inmate whose address was collected thanks to an IPS officer, would reach Dehradun on Saturday to meet her and to take her back home. The inmate had talked to her family members based in a village in Tamil Nadu on Sunday over phone after around 11 years since the connection snapped. She might go back home next week, said Uttarakhand additional secretary (social welfare) Manoj Chandran. He further said that after completing the necessary departmental formalities, she would be handed over to her family members.
“With the kind cooperation of the IAS officer, we have found out the address of the 45-year-old inmate hailing from Tamil Nadu. She has been missing since 2004 and living in several Nari Niketans since 2005,” he said. He further said that an IPS officer P Renuka Devi who also hails from Tamil Nadu had helped the department by interacting with the inmate and getting her address. As she found out the place the inmate was from Renuka helped her talk to her family members with the assistance of the police station concerned.
It is learnt that she has four children and all of them are now adults. They said they would take her home at the earliest. Missing since 2004, her family members had registered the missing report in the local police station the same year.
She had reached Uttarakhand in 2005 and got enrolled in Nari Niketan based in Kotdwar first. In 2008, she was transferred to the home based in Dehradun. Then SDM had written to the State Government, stating that the inmate being from Tamil Nadu, the language was proving a problem for communication. He said he should be brought to Dehradun to enable the department do the needful to send her back home.
Chandran said that this would be the second instance of the home inmates being sent back home. “We handed over an inmate to her family members based at Ranikhet in Almora after completing necessary departmental formalities on January 7.
Moreover, three more inmates who include two from Bangladesh and one from Burma will also be handed over to their respective family members after their addresses are found,” he said. He further said that three more who are supposed to be from Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka will be similarly sent back in case their addresses are traced out. “Now, the officials are working hard to find out their real addresses,” he added.
Observers say the initiative is a good but a much-belated one. “Had the State social welfare department officers taken a little pains to seek help of one who could communicate with her in her native language she might have gone to her native place way back in 2005. However, it is better late than never,” one of the observers say.
Notably, the department has taken the initiatives to send most of the inmates back home after the helter home got embroiled in shoddy controversies following the alleged rape/abortion of one of them and several having died or taken ill in a short span of time.
Inmates hailing from various parts of the country have been staying in the home based in Dehradun for the past many years, it is learnt.
In order to expedite things by way of course correction, the social welfare department has decided to seek help from IAS/IPS officers from other States now working here to interact with the inmates. They have also open in sign language experts and sent them to Nari Niketan to communicate with the inmates to learn details about their antecedents. “language is proving a major bar in communicating with the inmates. We are trying all means to overcome the impediment,” said a State social welfare department official.
Another senior social welfare department officer said that in course of interaction with the inmates, they had observed that some of the inmates are from non-Hindi-speaking States.
One of the officers expressed his surprise over the department having taken no initiative over all these years to send the inmates back to their respective homes. He said that such women hailing from States other than Uttarakhand should not have been enrolled in the shelter home in the State in the first place.