‘Child-trafficking’ stirs row in Kerala

Monday, 02 June 2014 | VR Jayaraj | Kochi

The incident of suspected trafficking of about 600 children from Bihar, Jharkhand and West Bengal into Kerala by Muslim orphanages in the State has triggered a political row with the Sate Home Minister terming it as illegal and Muslim outfits describing it as part of social service even as more evidences came up to suggest that this could indeed be a case of human trafficking.

The Railway Protection Force at Palakkad had detained 589 children belonging to four-to-14 year age group since May 22 as they were being brought to Kerala to be taken to orphanages run by Muslim outfits in Kozhikode and Malappuram. Also, eight people were arrested on the charge of suspected human trafficking. The children are currently kept in an orphanage in Palakkad.

As many as 336 of these children did not have valid travel tickets while the people who brought them could not produce the required official papers issued by the respective State Governments for taking them to Kerala. Some of these children have already been taken back to their homes by their parents after the incident sparked a controversy.

The Muslim League and other Muslim outfits are claiming that the children were being brought to be put up in reputed orphanages in Kerala and that there has never been any complaint about such arrivals. BJP’s national executive member Sobha Surendran had petitioned the Union Child Welfare Ministry regarding the suspected child-trafficking.

A five-member team of officials from Jharkhand, who visited Palakkad on Sunday, said that the incident had all the signs of child-trafficking. “The Jharkhand Government is providing children with free education and boarding. Why should they opt to leave the State in this manner? Our Government has taken this as a serious matter. There will be further inquiries,” said an official.

Meanwhile, Deputy Inspector General of Police S Sreejith, Nodal Officer in the Kerala State Human Rights Commission, held an inspection at the Muslim Orphanage in Mukkom, Kozhikode on Sunday. He seemed to be in agreement with the Jharkhand officials. It was to this orphanage the first batch of 456 children was brought from the other States.

After the inspection, held on the basis of a complaint that children had been put up there without authorisation, Sreejith said that the incident could be defined as human trafficking. He said the orphanage authorities had not fulfilled the mandatory requirements while bringing the children, adding that a decision on sending the children back would be taken if necessary.

The political row over the incident started after Home Minister Ramesh Chennithala came out against the way in which the children were brought into Kerala by jam-packing them into a railway compartment without travel tickets and proper documents. He asked the responsible outfits not to put the children into such hardships in the name of social service.

Chennithala also advised the Muslim outfits responsible for bringing these children into Kerala to start orphanages in other States instead of bringing them to Kerala in this way if they were serious about social service. This infuriated the Muslim League, the Congress’s biggest ally in Kerala, and Muslim outfits like the Jamaat-e-Islami and Sunni sect’s ‘Samastha’.

KPA Majeed, general secretary of the Muslim League, criticised Chennithala for his statement saying that most of the orphanages in the Malabar region were law-abiding institutions known for their philanthropy and asked for immediate withdrawal of all the moves to include the incident in the category of human trafficking.
Samastha said that the State Home Minister had humiliated the entire Muslim community with his statement. “Who is the Home Minister to advise a particular community regarding where it should open its institutions when the Constitution guarantees every citizen the right to live, study and work anywhere in the country?” asked a Samastha office-bearer.


The Kerala State Minority Commission also found fault with the Railway Protection force and the Palakkad District Child Welfare Committee for showing “unnecessary haste” in detaining the children and arresting those who were accompanying them. Commission chairman M Veerankutty said that the incident had nothing to do with child trafficking.

Source: http://www.dailypioneer.com/nation/child-trafficking-stirs-row-in-kerala.html