E-Paper
982 runaway children found at Pune railway station over past 2 years
Rohit Dubey, coordinator of Sathi Pune Railway Childline, an NGO, said, “Our social organisation is working round-the-clock to trace runaway children and ensure that they go back home. In the past two years, 982 children have come to Pune from different parts of the country, especially Jharkhand and Bihar.”
Over the past two years, around 982 children – mostly from Jharkhand and Bihar, who ran away from their homes due to abject poverty or because they were tired of studies, in search of a better life in the city - have been traced at Pune railway station.
Rohit Dubey, coordinator of Sathi Pune Railway Childline, an NGO, said, “Our social organisation is working round-the-clock to trace runaway children and ensure that they go back home. In the past two years, 982 children have come to Pune from different parts of the country, especially Jharkhand and Bihar.”
The NGO workers keep a very strict vigil at the railway station and carry out patrolling thrice during the night to find out children who are either crying or begging. The NGO workers then take the children into confidence and find out their place of residence. A legal process is completed after which the children are repatriated to their hometowns. In similar instances in the past, counselors have found children addicted to tobacco, cigarettes and even drugs.
According to the Government Railway Police (GRP) on an average, two to three children in the ages of 6 to 14 years land up at Pune railway station on a daily basis. A majority of these children arrive ticketless in the general bogey and take up odd jobs at paan stalls and other small business establishments. After completing their day’s work, they return to the railway station premises to sleep.
Physically assaulted and not given food on time by their kin, the children, fed up of constant torture and harassment, flee their homes and land up in Pune. When such children are found, the police try to locate their address and send them home. If the address cannot be located, the children are turned over to observation homes where detailed enquiries are carried out to locate their address.
