The Arya Orphanage, in which several small children are suspected to have been sexually abused and sodomised by boys and even the staff members, have denied all allegations of sexual abuse and alleged that the entire issue is a conspiracy being perpetuated by local politicians.
“The police have tied the hands and legs of the children and extracted a statement. The boy, who has been taken into custody for sexually abusing the girl who died, has not yet confessed,” said Viresh Pratap Chaudhry, president of the foundation that runs the orphanage when asked to respond to the reports about boys being sodomised by other inmates of the orphanage.
“It is only this boy who has been apprehended and against whom there is proof that such acts took place inside the walls of the orphanage. Just because of him, the whole institution is being blamed. There are reports that a sex racket is going on and that the orphanage is a hell-hole, does this look like a hell-hole? We are going to take another 1,000 children into our care soon”
“It is ridiculous that people are saying there is easy access to the girl's hostel by the boys of the hostel, there are no such things going on here” he said
When repeatedly questioned by journalists about whether he had questioned the staff or whether he was going to take any further action to prevent such atrocities in future he responded that he had not seen the post-mortem report of the girl who had died in December or reports that damned his staff members.
He also termed the entire incident a conspiracy of two MLAs whom he had refused favours. “There is this MLA who asked us to give the front portion of the orphanage land, we refused that is why he is doing this,” said Viresh Pratap Chaudhry, president of the Foundation that runs the orphanage, refusing to reveal the name of the MLA.
The failure of the orphanage to register itself under the Juvenile Justice Act despite a detailed report by the Child Welfare Committees following the rape of a five-year old girl inside the orphanage complex in Darya Ganj in 2009 was explained thus: “Our foundation was registered under the Women's and Institutions Licensing Act … our application for registration under the Juvenile Justice Act has been pending since 2008 and is now in the High Court...the Government is at fault, they should be prosecuted.”
The incident first came to light when an 11-year-old girl in the orphanage died under mysterious circumstances and the post-mortem report revealed that she had been raped and sodomised. A 14-year old boy in the same orphanage was apprehended by the police for the crime along with charges of sodomising another minor boy.
Keywords: child sexual abuse, sodomy, Delhi orphanage
