The Kerala High Court on Thursday severely criticised the Congress-led State Government for not properly handling the recent incident of the trafficking of hundreds of children from Bihar, Jharkhand and West Bengal without proper documents to orphanages run by Muslim outfits in the State even as the police held the middleman who had been canvassing children for the orphanages.
Stating that the reports on the incident were shocking, a division bench of the court headed by Chief Justice Manjula Chellur said that this was an incident that has put the State Government to shame. The bench observed that the stand taken so far on the issue by the State Government lacked credibility and were insufficient.
Considering a petition filed by Thampu, a Kochi-based NGO, seeking orders to return the children who were detained by the authorities at Palakkad as they reached the railway station on way to Kozhikode to their respective States, the court asked the Government whether it could assure that the children were not brought to Kerala to be into child labour.
The Railway Protection Force at Palakkad had since May 24 detained 589 children of between 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 persons were arrested on that day in connection with the incident. The police, acting on the instructions of the Child Welfare Committee, Palakkad, have registered a case of human trafficking, though the Government had the other day concluded that the incident could not be termed as human trafficking though there were certain serious lapses on the part of the orphanage authorities while bringing the children to Kerala.
The High Court ordered the Bihar, Jharkhand and West Bengal Governments and the Railways to be impleaded in the case. It advised the Government to hold a comprehensive investigation into the matter. It also wanted the Government to submit an affidavit with all the available documents related to the children and their arrival in Kerala from their home States.
Meanwhile, the special investigation team of the Kerala Police’s Crime Branch, which was probing the alleged child-trafficking incident, on Thursday, arrested a Jharkhand native working in Kerala, who had been acting as the middleman canvassing children in his home State for the orphanages of the Muslim Orphanage Committee at Mukkom in Kozhikode.
The Crime Branch officials has registered the arrest of Shakeel Akhtar, who had been working in Aluva near Kochi, on Thursday morning, after calling him to Palakkad and questioning him for over an hour. It is said that Shakeel’s wife is working in the Muslim Orphanage at Mukkom and that he had come into
contact with the institution through her.
According to one of the police sources, Shakeel used to visit Jharkhand during vacations. His method was to take some children who were already studying at the orphanage at Mukkom along with him on his trips to Jharkhand and use them for canvassing more children from there. With this, the total number of persons arrested in connection with the incident rose to nine.
At the same time, the Crime Branch held inspections at the Muslim Orphanage at Mukkom and questioned the institution’s office-bearers, students and their guardians. The Child Welfare Committee, Palakkad, has permitted 157 of the children brought to Kerala to be returned to their respective States.
The Kerala State Minority Commission on Thursday submitted a report on the issue to Chief Minister Oommen Chandy reiterating its stand that the incident could not be termed as one of human trafficking. Commission chairman M Veerankutty demanded action against the officials who had “created a controversy” over it by projecting it as human trafficking.