The Hindu : Tamil Nadu / Coimbatore News : Three children rescued from beggary

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Tuesday, Apr 06, 2004

Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu - Coimbatore

Three children rescued from beggary

By Our Staff Reporter

COIMBATORE, APRIL 5. In two separate incidents between Sunday night and this morning, three children were rescued from beggary by Childline, the phone-in rescue organisation for children in distress.

A boy, Murugesan, aged one-and-a-half, and a two-month-old girl, Priya, were rescued last night when a man, Ravi (33), who claimed to be their father, was using them for seeking alms near the Coimbatore Medical College Hospital (CMCH). Both children were found with blisters all over their body.

In the other incident, a television journalist's call to Childline helped in rescuing a nine-year-old girl, Saroja, from beggary before the District Collectorate this morning. The girl and a woman, Arakkani (50), in whose custody she was found begging, were taken to the Childline's office at the Don Bosco Anbu Illam, a rehabilitation centre for runaway and destitute children. So were the man and the children who were picked up from the hospital area.

Sources in Childline said persons working in a bakery opposite the hospital found Ravi seeking alms and asked whether the children belonged to him. He said the three had come from Dindigul after his wife's death sometime ago. They were then brought to Childline.

However, on being questioned further, the man began to provide conflicting versions about his family. Later, he admitted that his wife was alive and in Dindigul but maintained that the children were his. He claimed that poverty had brought him to Coimbatore and forced him into beggary.

Till late this evening, Childline was trying to ascertain whether there was any truth in his statements as they varied with each session of questioning. A team from Childline even took Ravi to Ganapathy in the city to verify his claim that his relatives lived there.

In today's incident, following the tip-off by the scribe, a team from Childline swooped on Arakkani at the Collectorate and found that Saroja was unwell and being carried by the woman. When the child was asked to walk, it was unable to do so owing to blisters in the toes. Even as the Childline team was trying to advise her against using children in beggary, Arakkani began to protest and took to heels. She was caught by the team near the Railway Protection Force office, about 400 metres from the Collectorate.

She retracted her earlier claim that she belonged to Salem and said that beggary gangs known to her operated in the Ukkadam area here.

However, she admitted that she was the only one who involved her child also. Asserting that Saroja was her daughter, Arakkani said she was forced to take to alms owing to poverty, after her husband died two years ago.

Asked whether a police complaint would be lodged against Ravi and Arakkani, sources said it had to be first ascertained whether the children were theirs or not.

"Every single claim of theirs is being verified thoroughly," they said.

The public reaction against involving children in beggary became stronger after the case of four-year-old Rani came to light in the city some days ago. The badly-bruised child was hospitalised with a fractured elbow and battered right cheek. Gomathi (50), the child's grandmother, has been arrested under the Tamil Nadu Prevention of Beggary Act.

Rani's case proved to be an eye opener on torturing and maiming of children by beggary gangs to evoke public sympathy.

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