A thousand tragedies every year in heart of city

Every year 1,000 children reach the New Delhi Railway Station not knowing where to go, reports Chetan Chauhan.

Updated on: Aug 20, 2007, 01:31:28 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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No other place better reflects the seriousness of India's missing children from poor families than the New Delhi Railway Station, where every year 1,000 children reach not knowing where to go — apparently the highest figure for any railway station in the country.

Some, even after being caught by railway authorities, still go missing in the absence of coordination between government authorities concerned.

This is what the Railway Protection Force (RPF) has said in a 'Right to Information' reply to Raj Mangal Prasad of NGO Pratidhi.

For the little ones coming from mostly bimaru states of Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Jharkhand and Madhya Pradesh, all have tales of horror to tell. "Some had not eaten for days, others complained of torture in the hands of traffickers and a few recalled the state of poverty back home. Many of these children come to Delhi in search of a good life but many are also trafficked," said a senior railway official, recalling his interaction with many such children.

The RPF said in 2006, 1,141 children were found at the New Delhi Railway Station and the figure till March 2007 was 166. At other stations in Delhi, except Nizamuddin, for where figures were not available, missing children found were negligible, the RTI reply said.

So many missing children being traced at railway stations is not unexpected. An NHRC study in 2004 said railway stations remain the second home for a large number of missing children in India.

Despite these staggering figures, RPF's Achla Sinha, in her reply, admits that there is no special programme for the abandoned or missing children found but says the police are briefed to be polite with these children. These children are either forwarded to NGO Prayas or the Child Welfare Committee of the Delhi government, she said.

The process of transition from the station to a children's home is not smooth as Sinha makes it appear in her reply.

Prasad said some children go missing in this transition and he points out the case of Mohd Asim as one example.

Railway authorities found Asim at the New Delhi Railway Station on January 31 this year. A railway official handed him over at a Prayas counter the same day, the RTI reply said. But, Rajesh Kumar, coordinator with Prayas, denied having received the child at the station counter. So, the child is still missing instead of being under government protection.

Prasad said such a thing could have been avoided had he been handed over to a government agency under the Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Act, 2000. The railways, it appears, has realised its mistake and has asked officials to initiate action in the case of missing children under the Act.

This is just the tip of the iceberg, said Sreerupa Chaudhury of the National Legal Service Authority. "Only a few children are rescued at railway stations. The rest reach factories or end up on streets begging or in prostitute dens. Unless the government is keen to implement the Juvenile Justice Act seriously, the future of our poor children will remain in the dark," she said.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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