Child rights activists on Wednesday rescued 29 boys in the age-group of eight to 17 years from the Ernakulam Town Railway station while being taken to an orphanage (Yathimkhana) run by a religious trust at Nettoor.
Preliminary investigations revealed that the children, hailing from various northern states including New Delhi, Haryana, Rajasthan and Bihar were being taken to the orphanage without sufficient documents. They reached Ernakulam by the Nizamuddin-Ernakulam Mangala Express at 10 am along with three caretakers and were taken into custody by the railway police.
The police conducted a preliminary examination of the documents submitted by the Yathimkhana employees and later handed them over to Child Welfare Committee (CWC) members and Childline volunteers.
“Though they produced the willingness letter of parents of the children, they didn’t get the mandatory clearance of CWC from the home states. Further, the children were found to be from poor families and there was a chance of influencing their parents by offering monetary benefits,” a senior CWC official said.
During an interrogation, some of the children told the officials that they had been residents of the orphanage for the past two years and studying in schools near Kochi. “However, many of them could not give a proper answer as to why they had been brought to Kochi’’, the official added.
The CWC also took statements of the Muslim orphanage management and later shifted the children to another Yathimkhana near Edappally.
