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| The rescued girl’s parents. |
In the most recent of recurring cases of minors trafficked from rural
areas to work as domestic workers in the city, a 14-year old Adivasi
girl from Jharkhand was rescued from Kashmiri Gate on May 5 after she
left her employer's house in Chandigarh. Despite a Supreme Court order
last January followed by a Home Ministry directive in July 2013 that
complaints of all missing children be immediately registered as FIRs,
Jharkhand police or Delhi police are yet to do this.
The girl Ritika Mundu (name changed) told the CWC that she had been
brought to Delhi by a woman Phaguni Mundu from her village in Khunti in
Jharkhand last month. She had been taken to Chandigarh to work as
domestic worker where she was beaten regularly and not allowed to
contact her family. She narrated that her employers had thrown her out
of their house on May 4 after which she caught a bus to Delhi. She was
spotted crying and in distress by vendors near ISBT who then alerted the
Kashmiri Gate police chowki, who in turn informed the NGO Shakti
Vahini.
Ritika Mundu, who has been sent to a children's shelter home, was
carrying an Aadhaar card which revealed her father Kunwar Mundu's name
and her address in Hetgaon village in Khunti's Murhu block. Her father
works as a farm labourer.
Usually, the Child Welfare Committee orders registering of an FIR but
they did not specify this time. “The child's father has not yet made a
formal complaint,” said a senior police official in Delhi.
“A FIR should have been registered automatically to begin an
investigation into who brought her here and if any placement agency was
involved. Since the family is very poor, we have offered to assist them
reach their child here,” said Rishikant of NGO Shakti Vahini. He added
the NGO had rescued over 70 children from Jharkhand working as domestic
workers so far this year.
In Murhu block in Jharkhand, the girl's father Kunwar Mundu told
Jharkhand-based NGO Diya Sewa Sansathan that Ritika, and two other boys
including Ritika's 10-year old cousin Uday Mundu, boarded a bus from the
village with Phaguni Mundu on April 5 without informing their families.
“She was in my class but stopped coming regularly to school two years
back to help her father. She is a simple child but very articulate. If
she had continued she would be in class VIII now,” said Devi Kumari who
teaches at the government middle school in Hetgaon. The village mukhiya
Devnath Mundu said the village had witnessed similar cases last year
too. “Two girls who are 12 and 13 years old are missing since last year,
their families found no trace of them. We reported to the thana too but
there was no information. Then, last month these three children boarded
a bus to Ranchi and maybe a train from there. At least Ritika was
found, there is no word on the other two boys who are 10 and 12 years
old,” the mukhiya Devnath Mundu told The Hindu on the phone from Jharkhand.
Studies estimate the number of children trafficked from
Jharkhand is between 30,000 to 40,000. But the number of FIRs of
missing children is less than 500 – a huge gap,” said Baidnath Kumar who
works with Diya Sewa Sansathan in Jharkhand.