Solicitor-General Ranjit Kumar on Thursday submitted before the Supreme Court that some of the children rescued from Kerala’s Palakkad district, while being illegally transported from Bihar, were sent with the knowledge of their parents who hoped they would get a better education in the State.
Mr. Kumar, however, told a three-judge Bench led by Chief Justice of India H.L. Dattu that not all these children rescued by the Railway Police and district officials were sent for studies, some were indeed abducted.
Mr. Kumar made the submissions during a court hearing on a PIL by Nobel Prize winner Kailash Satyarthi’s child rights group, Bachpan Bachao Andolan, on missing children and trafficking.
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“There was an incident in which about 600 children were being taken to Kozhikode from Bihar. Some of these children happened to be from one community who were actually sent by their parents for education. But among these, there were those who were abducted... not all were sent for studies,” Mr. Kumar said.
The Palakkad incident concerned a group of 455 children, aged between 4 and 14, rescued on May 24, 2014 at a railway station. All the children were found to be travelling with no tickets or travel documents. But 156 of these children possessed identity cards of an educational institution of an orphanage based in Kozhikode.
The court was specifically looking into the reasons behind the disappearances of children from Bihar. The S-G related the Palakkad incident when the court asked the reasons for children going missing from the State.
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Mr. Kumar informed that 2,872 children had disappeared from Bihar between January 2013 and September 2014. Of this 2,241, were traced, while 633 are still missing.
“What are the causes for their disappearances? Are they being abducted, employed as domestic servants and later trafficked?” Justice Madan B. Lokur, on the Bench, asked.
In 2013, the court issued a slew of directions, including that cases of missing children be registered as a cognizable offence and compulsory lodging of FIRs.
Agony of parents“Even steps like registering of FIRs and putting up the photographs of the missing child were not taken. Can you understand the agony of a parent whose child is missing?” Chief Justice Dattu asked. The hearing saw the Chief Secretaries and police chiefs of Bihar and Chhattisgarh present in the courtroom on the summons of the Bench.
In Chhattisgarh’s case, 9,428 children have gone missing, but only 1,977 FIRs were registered.
The State’s counsel blamed the high rate of school drop-outs and proliferation of unregistered placement agencies offering jobs as domestic helps as the “main villains” behind the disappearances.