Jharkhand police reach Ludhiana to probe ‘illegal’ children’s shelter home

The district administration of Ludhiana sealed Paksin Mary Cross Child Shelter Home in Phullanwal which was being run by Satyandra Prakash Musa without any registration under the Juvenile Justice Act.

Jharkhand police reaches Ludhiana; starts probe in ‘illegal’ children’s shelter home

Ludhiana children’s shelter home. (Express photo)

A team of Jharkhand police from Chaibasa of West Singhbhum district reached Ludhiana Thursday to probe ‘illegal’ children’s shelter home case and to take the children belonging to Jharkhand back with them. On August 20, the district administration of Ludhiana sealed Paksin Mary Cross Child Shelter Home in Phullanwal which was being run by Satyandra Prakash Musa for at least twelve years but without any registration under the Juvenile Justice Act.

At least 38 children between the ages 5-18 were living there. Musa was served a notice in July by Child Welfare Committee (CWC) Ludhiana to get the shelter home registered and complete the formalities but when he failed to do so, the shelter home was sealed. Musa handed over 30 children to their parents on his own without informing the officials. The remaining eight children were shifted to a shelter home in Doraha by CWC after sealing the home.

A team of five cops led by sub-inspector Banarasi Lal from Jharkhand police’s anti-human trafficking wing reached Ludhiana on Thursday to question Musa and take the children back who are from Jharkhand. ACP (south) Ludhiana Sartaj Singh Chahal said that a team from Jharkhand police and Ludhiana’s Sadar police station recorded statements of eight children and Musa.

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“The remaining eight children who are still here said that they were never ill-treated at this home. They were also being educated and their own parents had left them here since they were very poor. So as of now, there is no human trafficking angle. Further Jharkhand police will also verify credentials of 30 other children who were handed over to their parents by Musa before the shelter home was sealed,” said the ACP.

He added that of the remaining eight children, four are from Bihar and four from Jharkhand. “They will be handed over to their parents by the respective state administrations,” said ACP Chahal.

Meanwhile, Musa told the police that no child was kept illegally or was being ill-treated and that parents who were unable to take care of their children due to poor financial conditions sent their children to the shelter home and he used to take care of their education and other needs.

Sources meanwhile said that Jharkhand police had found links between Musa and a nun who was caught trafficking a newborn baby following which the probe shifted to the children’s home in Ludhiana and the administration was directed to inspect it. ACP Chahal said that no FIR has been registered yet. “Probe is ongoing. There is no complaint of any child being ill-treated yet,” he said.

Divya Goyal

Divya Goyal is a Principal Correspondent with The Indian Express, based in Punjab. Her interest lies in exploring both news and feature stories, with an effort to reflect human interest at the heart of each piece. She writes on gender issues, education, politics, Sikh diaspora, heritage, the Partition among other subjects. She has also extensively covered issues of minority communities in Pakistan and Afghanistan. She also explores the legacy of India's partition and distinct stories from both West and East Punjab. She is a gold medalist from the Indian Institute of Mass Communication (IIMC), Delhi, the most revered government institute for media studies in India, from where she pursued English Journalism (Print). Her research work on “Role of micro-blogging platform Twitter in content generation in newspapers” had won accolades at IIMC. She had started her career in print journalism with Hindustan Times before switching to The Indian Express in 2012. Her investigative report in 2019 on gender disparity while treating women drug addicts in Punjab won her the Laadli Media Award for Gender Sensitivity in 2020. She won another Laadli for her ground report on the struggle of two girls who ride a boat to reach their school in the border village of Punjab. ... Read More

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