The National Investigation Agency (NIA) is looking into the incident of trafficking of children to a Muslim orphanage in Kerala from Malda in West Bengal. The agency is said to have undertaken the task on the basis of Intelligence reports that the incident might have dimensions beyond mere transfer of children to orphanage for education.
The focus of the examination is the transfer of 58 children from West Bengal’s Malda district bordering Bangladesh to a Muslim orphanage in Kerala’s Malappuram district, according to reports from Delhi. Intelligence reports say that the children were brought to Kerala offering English education apart from the regular studies at the Madrassa of the orphanage.
The trafficking of these children came to light on May 24 after the Railway Protection Force detained 486 children from Jharkhand, Bihar and West Bengal at Palakkad Railway Station as they were being brought to two Muslim orphanages in Kerala. Most of the children and those who were accompanying them did not have any papers permitting their inter-state transfer.
The NIA examination, presently concentrated on the native places of the 58 children in Malda, may be extended to Kerala on the basis of the findings there. The Crime Branch of the Jharkhand Police is already holding a probe into the trafficking of children from that State into an orphanage run by Muslim management at Mukkom in Kozhikode district.
Intelligence agencies are of the opinion that funds collected from outside the country could have been used for taking the children from Malda to Kerala. It is also said that the findings of the Kerala Police team which had held inquiries in Malda in connection with the incident justified the NIA investigation.
Immediately after the detention of the children in May, suspicions had been aired from various quarters that the children were perhaps being put into activities that had nothing to do with Madrassa education. Reports had also suggested the possibility that the children might have been subjected to ill-treatment at the orphanages.
The Crime Branch of the Kerala Police had registered a case for human trafficking in connection with the incident but the Kerala Government had taken a position that it was simply a case of procedural lapses on part of the orphanage managements who had failed in organising the required documents from the authorities of the States from where they were brought.
While the Kerala Home Department had taken a serious view of the matter, others — including the Chief Minister — in the Congress-led UDF Government disagreed with it allegedly because of the pressures the Muslim league, which was an important UDF partner and which was anxious to protect the orphanages, exerted on them.
The Kerala Government had recently opposed a proposal of the High Court for a CBI probe into the incident saying that the Crime Branch of the police was already probing it effectively and as the case did not have elements that came under the purview of the Juvenile Justice Act. The court had wanted a CBI probe considering the inter-state ramifications of the incident.
The Jharkhand Crime Branch has said that it will register a case against the orphanage in Mukkom to where the children from there were taken. A team of Jharkhand officials who had visited the orphanage last week had recorded statements of the children and had confirmed that the incident was indeed one of human trafficking.