Dongri shelter home boy visits Mumbai as Dutch cop
Jamil Meusen spent two years in a centre for orphans and children at conflict with the law at Dongri in Mumbai before being adopted by a Dutch couple in 1976. He is visiting the city with his eldest son on Monday.
Jamil Meusen’s only memories of Mumbai are from 43 years ago — the red double-decker buses, roaming around the city lost and alone, and travelling in a local train before he was taken to the Dongri Children’s Home. On Monday, Meusen will visit the home and talk to its children about how he became a police commissioner in the Dutch city of Breda.
Meusen spent two years at the Dongri home — a centre for orphans and children in conflict with the law — before a Dutch couple adopted him in 1976. “Meusen’s life is a great inspiration for the children, who can aspire to achieve more,” said Trupti Jadhav, the superintendent of the Dongri Children’s Home. “The stigma of being from such a home often makes it difficult for children to go ahead and lead normal lives as adults, but Meusen’s journey could help them aim higher.”
This is not Meusen’s first visit to Mumbai or the home — his most recent being in 2016. “When we first invited Meusen, he was happy, and also recalled how he must have been around 3- years- old when two policemen brought him to the Dongri home,” Jadhav said. The children’s home took Meusen in, in 1974. Soon after, he was sent to the St Catherine’s home in Andheri from where he was adopted by his Dutch parents two years later.
In the Netherlands, he went on serve in the military for 18 years, taking part in two peacekeeping missions in Bosnia and Afghanistan before joining the Netherlands National Police. Meusen is married to a doctor who teaches at a local university and has four sons. His eldest will visit the home with him on Monday.