The Kerala High Court on Tuesday said that the State Government had not yet been able to remove the mystery behind the recent incident of trafficking of hundreds of children from other States without proper documents to orphanages run by Muslim managements in Kerala.
Asking the Kerala Police, whose crime Branch was currently probing the incident, to submit a report on the progress of inquiry in sealed envelope to the court before July 2, a division bench headed by Chief Justice Manjula Chellur said that it was still unclear who the children brought from other states actually were and why many of them were sent back.
Observing that there were contradictions in the State Government’s position on the case, the court said that it was necessary to know what the children brought to Kerala so were doing. It also wanted to know about the situation in which the children from other states had to be brought to Kerala in jam-packed train compartments.
The court made the observations while considering a public interest litigation filed by voluntary organisation Thampu over the incident of trafficking of nearly 600 children from Jharkhand, Bihar and West Bengal to orphanages run by Muslim managements at Mukkom in Kozhikode and Vettathur in Malappuram.
The police had detained many of these children at the Palakkad Railway Station on May 24 as they were being brought by train. The police, who registered a case for human trafficking as per the instruction of the Palakkad district Child Welfare Committee, had arrested 10 persons in connection with the incident.
On Tuesday, the court asked the State Government why some people were arrested in connection with the incident if the children were brought to Kerala for studies and why some of them were sent back. The management of the Muslim Orphanage at Mukkom told the court that the children had not been sent back to their States.
The orphanage management, which had through a petition filed the other day sought to implead in the case, said that the children were coming back to the orphanage after spending their summer vacation at their native places. The orphanage alleges that a concerted effort is going on to spoil its reputation.
The division bench, which will take up the case again on June 30, had last week said that a CBI probe was preferable in the case as it involved more States than one. The CBI has received legal advice that there is no impediment to its taking over the probe from the State police once the court issued the necessary direction.
The incident had created fissures within the Congress-led UDF Government in the State with the Home Department taking a tough stand while Chief Minister Oommen Chandy and several others maintaining that the case could not be termed as one of human trafficking but it was one of some lapses on the part of the orphanage managements.
Meanwhile, the Crime Branch probing the incident recorded statements of six office-bearers of the Muslim Orphanage at Mukkom. The police quizzed them by calling them to Palakkad from Kozhikode. After the exercise, Muhammad Mon Haji, vice-president of the orphanage, said they would welcome any probe — even one by the CBI — into the incident.