E-Paper
Ill-treatment at home forces two girls to flee
Cases of children fleeing their homes is becoming rampant. 'Childline' is sheltering two such children at present who reached the city from the far flung places. Two girls aged about 11 years were found loitering by the Childline volunteers on July 1 in front of Swaraj Bhawan here.
Cases of children fleeing their homes is becoming rampant. 'Childline' is sheltering two such children at present who reached the city from the far flung places.
Two girls aged about 11 years were found loitering by the Childline volunteers on July 1 in front of Swaraj Bhawan here.
The girls had come to Allahabad from Delhi. Circumstances had forced them to leave their homes. One girl Sunita (name changed) actually belongs to Bhopal.
She was allegedly being ill-treated and assaulted at home. She has three other sisters who were deliberately sent by her step-mother to stay elsewhere. Sunita was also finally sent along with a relative to work as house-maid in different cities.
"While working in Delhi she met another girl Radha (name changed) of her age. She stayed in the colony where Sunita worked. Radha was facing the problem of discrimination at home.
Any punishment by mother was taken as a discrimination by her from other siblings. Slowly, the two forged a good friendship and then Sunita started convincing Radha to leave her home and family and go elsewhere in search of better horizons," said Shagufta Naqvi, coordinator of Childline Allahabad.
"Sunita also nurtured the dream of pursuing her education in an orphanage.
However, none of them exactly knew the location of any particular orphanage and the girls thus landed in Allahabad," she added.
The address of both the girls have been traced by the volunteers. "Radha is now ready to go to her parents in Delhi but we are still not sure about Sunita if it will be the right step to send her back. She will attempt to leave the home again and besides, she was treated badly by her step-mother. Most probably, Sunita will find a better place in a rehabilitation centre," said Shagufta.
"Childline keeps getting such cases and most of them are about the girls ditched by their lovers. Children are ready to take such important decisions on their own and unaware of the actual hardships of life, they leave home. Such cases are on the rise and there is a need to check them," she added.
