NEW DELHI, THE SENTINEL
Jan 27:Shakti Vahini, an NGO, and various other organizations have demanded of the Centre to conduct a CBI inquiry into the incident of rescue of 76 Assam and Manipur children from an unregistered children’s home in Kanyakumari in Tamil Nadu on January 25. National Commission for Protection of Children Rights chairperson Shanta Sinha rushed to Kanyakumari this morning to monitor the situation.
The 76 children were rescued from a home at Kulitorai in Tamil Nadu’s Kanyakumari district. All the children are boys in the 10-14-year age group. Prabhakaran, a member of the Child Welfare Committee (CWC) that rescued the children, said that the boys were forced to live in an appalling condition. This is the second time that the CWC has rescued trafficked children from the Northeast in Tamil Nadu, he said.
According to sources, the 76 children were rescued from an unregistered orphanage called Bedesta Blessing Home located in Kanyakumari. The sources further disclosed that Bedesta Blessing Home lacked both infrastructure and enough food to feed the children, and the crackdown on the home was conducted by members of the CWC of Tirunelveli district, Tamil Nadu.
Fifty-four of the 76 children are from Manipur and the rest are from Assam, the sources said, adding that the children had been staying at the Home since July 2009. Shakti Vahini, Bikalpa Dhara and other organizations have urged the Union Home Minister to ask the CBI to investigate the matter. In a letter to the minister, Shakti Vahini president Ravi Kant said: “These are very disturbing trends. Trafficking from the Northeast and eastern Himalayan region is on the rise and it needs a detailed investigation. We are enclosing all the reports… these reports may be the tip of the iceberg and there are all possibilities that organized gangs have started operating in the area to traffick women and children. We seek a detailed inquiry into these reports and cases of trafficking by the CBI.”
http://www.sentinelassam.com/mainnews/story.php?sec=1&subsec=0&id=26465&dtP=2010-01-28&ppr=1
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