The Bihar Government on Monday told the Kerala High Court that the incident of bringing several children from that State to orphanages run by Muslim managements in Kerala could not be considered as a case of human trafficking. Hundreds of children had been brought to the Kerala orphanages from Bihar, Jharkhand and West Bengal last May.
In an affidavit submitted in the court, the Deputy Director of the Social Welfare Department, Bihar, said the children were brought to the Muslim orphanages in Kerala for enabling them to get education. The affidavit said that the children were taken to Kerala with the permission of their parents and the incident could not be seen as human trafficking.
It further said that the reason for sending the children to Kerala was that the orphanages were providing them with free education, food and accommodation. The Crime Branch of the Bihar Police had found these things, the affidavit submitted in response to a petition seeking CBI probe into the incident said.
The State Government submitted in the court that the Supreme Court had already rejected the demand for a CBI probe into the matter. The court asked the Advocate General to produce the order of the apex court. In effect, the Bihar Government’s stand endorsed the argument of the Kerala Government that the incident could not be seen as human trafficking.
The Railway Protection Force had on May 24 detained nearly 580 children from Bihar, Jharkhand and West Bengal at the Palakkad railway station as they were being brought by train in a jam-packed compartment to two orphanages run by Muslim managements at Mukkom in Kozhikode and Vettathur in Malappuram without proper documents.
Neither the parents of the children nor the orphanage representatives accompanying them could produce the documents required for inter-state transfer of children. The Kerala Police had registered a case for human trafficking but the Government later said that this was not a case of human trafficking though there were some lapses on the part of the orphanages.