Agra protection home fails to protect its young

AGRA - The Children’s Protection Home in Agra had handed over 10 young children for adoption to couples between 2004 and 2006. Today there is no trace of six of them.

In 2009, shocking accusations of sexual abuse made by three young girl inmates against an employee of the home led to a first information report (FIR) being filed against him.

With such allegations against it, the home seems to have not only failed in protecting its young inmates but also poses a threat to them, say activists.

Naresh Paras, a human rights activist and a representative of Amnesty International in India, first came to know about the missing children in July 2009 through a contact. He subsequently filed an RTI application. From the response he got of the ten adopted, the whereabouts of six were not recorded.

The October 26, 2009, inquiry report of a team of the National Commission for Protection of Child Rights said “during the inquiry the allegations of nine children missing from Bal Grah was found to be true.” Three were later traced.

Records at the home had no addresses or whereabouts of the people who adopted Chandan, 2, Devendra, 2, Jyoti, 5, Vivek, 6, and Pappu, 8, (one child without name) between 2004 and 2006. “Nobody knows where they are and with whom,” Paras says.

He brought the matter to the notice of Luv Verma, member secretary of the National Commission for Protection of Child Rights. The commission sent its team to investigate the matter and found the allegations of missing children to be true.

The matter was also brought to the notice of the district magistrate of Agra in December 2009, but no concrete action has been taken since then and the children still remain untraced.

An application filed under the Right To Information (RTI) Act also did not help.

Despite complaints to the police, district authorities, the human rights commissioner, the chief minister and the governor of the state and even the Indian president, nothing has come out of the inquiries, investigations and interrogations.

“They all kept forwarding (my complaints) the letter. That’s how democracy works in our country,” Paras says in exasperation.

The children still remain untraced.

While the matter of missing children is still unresolved, a fresh controversy has rocked the Home.

An FIR was registered Sep 15, 2009, against Kaushal, an attendent at the home. Kaushal was accused of molestation by three girls - Laxmi, Shailey and Khushboo - all under 10 years.

“Kaushal sir would ask us to press his legs and feet in the night. Those who refused were beaten,” said a statement by the victims recorded in the office of the city magistrate.

The children gave shocking details of his misdemeanours. In the statement, they said, “Kaushal had molested them in the night.”

After the complaints and involvement of social activists, several inquiry committees visited the home and found the allegations to be true.

Kaushal was transferred from the home and then a man called Hari Babu was brought in. But according to the staff, he “drinks too much”.

“The guilty have remained undeterred and free so far. The limit is that small girls were molested at the home by a fourth class employee and despite proof he was merely transferred,” says Paras.

Even after such a long period, nothing concrete has been achieved and life goes on “in that dirty murky joint threatening the future of the little inmates,” says Paras.

(Brij Khandelwal can be contacted at brij.k@ians.in)