Kerala's child-trafficking should be investigated
Over two months have passed since the day 486 children from Jharkhand, West Bengal and Bihar were detained while they were being taken to Kerala without proper documents to be put into orphanages run by Muslim organisations, but the Kerala Government has not so far been able to unravel the mystery behind the incident, to confirm or deny whether it was a case of human trafficking or to categorically state that the matter did not have elements that warranted anxiety. The fact is that the Congress-led UDF Government in Kerala, in which the Muslim league — which has donned the role of protector of the orphanages to where the kids were being taken — is an important partner, has not cared to handle the issue with the required seriousness. The Crime Branch of Kerala Police is holding an inquiry into the incident but it has reached nowhere near conclusion. The Kerala High Court has on more than one occasion proposed a CBI probe into the incident because of its inter-State ramifications and suspicions expressed by many, but the State has steadfastly opposed it. Kerala Police has registered a case for human trafficking but the Government argues that there has been no mal-intention on the part of the two orphanages to where the kids were being taken, one in Kozhikode and the other in Malappuram, a Muslim-majority district. The Crime Branch of Jharkhand Police has said that it has got enough evidence to book one of these orphanages. It has been found that one of the 11 men — agents — arrested in the case had been mysteriously keeping fake seals and letterheads of Jharkhand Government authorities. Intelligence agencies are said to have found the possibility of involvement of foreign funds in the transfer of many of these children.
Even the fact that 58 of these children were from Malda, a West Bengal district bordering Bangladesh where illegal immigration from across the border has been posing a huge problem for the nation, has not made the Kerala Government recognise its seriousness. It is still trying to downplay the incident probably because of its compulsions to keep a particular community that constitutes 26 per cent of the State's population, happy for electoral reasons. Even the orphanages to where the children were taken may never know the actual dimensions of the case because those who had acted as caretakers or agents had not provided them with documents from authorities of the States of origin. Many of the Islamist extremists arrested from Kerala had had links with terror outfits operating in Bangladesh. Kerala itself is a preferred destination for illegal Bangladeshi migrants. Nobody is finding fault with the institutions engaged in the humanitarian service of providing good life and education to poor children, but everything should be transparent. All these point to the necessity of a comprehensive probe by a competent agency. The Kerala Government should shed its prejudices in the matter.