The police on Monday took 23 children of Jamti village along with them to get them admitted in various residential schools in Gumla in a bid to foil the Maoist plan to force them joining their ranks.
Naxal commander Nakul Yadav, reportedly holding a meeting in the village, recently had threatened the villagers that they will not be allowed to graze their cattle in the jungles and also will not be allowed to fetch firewood from there if they fail to provide one child from each of the household. According to the villagers, they had been asked to hand over children within 15 days or they will have to face serious consequences.
The police, however, claimed that the initiative was taken by the district administration for the betterment of the children living in one of the remotest and underdeveloped areas of the state where facility of education was completely missing.
“It’s not a matter of solution but it’s a matter of the future of those children who are residing in Jamti village where there is no facility of education and there are no means to put these children in boarding schools,” said DGP DK Pandey.
Ranchi Range DIG RK Dhan along with Gumla SP Bhimsen Tuti holding a meeting with the villagers on Monday took 23 children along with them for admitting them into one or the other government boarding schools in the State. Expenses of education of these children will be borne by the state government.
“Parents of 23 children, including 13 girls, agreed to send their children with the administration who will be admitted to various schools at the cost of the administration. Other children left behind in the village will also be admitted soon with the consent of their parents under the joint efforts made by the district administration and the district police,” said the DGP.
According to the DGP, it will have multiple benefits – parents, who are extremely poor, will not have to bear the extra burden of educating their children and also the children of the area through education will get prepared to face this competitive word. The initiative taken by the district administration will further encourage parents of other children to send their children to residential schools, expenses for which will be borne by the administration, said the DGP.
“To ensure security to the villagers living in the area, we are also planning to set up a base camp in the area so that more than 15-18 villages out of 35 could be brought into direct contact with the camp. As soon as Jori Bridge gets constructed over Jamti-Chaupat River, Gumla and latehar will get directly connected to each other. Garu block of latehar will also come in the easy approach of Gumla,” the DGP said.
“I also appeal to the private schools having boarding facility to adopt at least 10 such children in each of the classes so that these children living in extreme conditions could also get a chance to live a dignified life after getting educated in those schools,” said DGP.
Ranchi range DIG Dhan, however, admitted that the children who were found to be the most vulnerable for being taken away by the CPI (Maoists) were chosen for being picked up by the police so that they could be taken away from the place to avert any threat perception to them.
“Most of the children who have been picked up come from a very humble background while some others have already lost their parents left no one to take care of them,” said Dhan. They have been identified after a long exercise by the Gumla SP, who had been camping in the area from quite some time to take stock of the situation, Dhan added.
Earlier also, the CPI (Maoists) had forcefully taken away at least 35 children from Gumla and lohardaga following which the Jharkhand High Court, taking a strong note of newspaper reports, had taken suo-motto cognizance in May last year and issued notices to Union and State Governments along with various other departments of the State Government.
Children, according to police, are taken away by Naxal outfits to induct them into their cadres who are generally used as couriers or as human shields in case they are intercepted by the security forces during the anti-Naxal operations.