Anil ended up in the less than palatial environment of the now notorious Fulbari Children’s Home in New Delhi. Every day there must have seemed like a lifetime to him in the midst of the sadistic violence meted out by the staff on Indian and Nepali children who find themselves there as unwilling inmates. Anil recalls with a shudder how one form of punishment was to be beaten by a rose stem with one end wrapped in a cloth to act as a handle.
The UK children’s charity, The Esther Benjamins Trust (EBT), and its NGO partner, The Esther Benjamins Memorial Foundation (EBMF), have been researching the circumstances of displaced Nepali children in Indian children’s homes for the past year. A very grim picture has emerged of children who may be economic migrants, runaways, or trafficking survivors and who come to be detained in facilities that are a “home” in name only. They are often put there by NGOs who can then claim a “rescue” – and the associated publicity and overseas funding – while these government-sponsored homes can claim central funds for accommodating the children. No effort is made to reunite these children with their families, and at age 18, after years of brutality, they are dumped back onto the streets, physically and mentally scarred.
EBT/EBMF has combined research with rescue, and in association with ChildLine India Foundation and the Nepali Embassy, EBMF are now bringing children home to be returned to their families who believed them to be long since dead. A total of 24 have been freed by EBMF in the past year. No small feat, given how difficult it is to access the secretive and dangerous world of facilities such as Fulbari.
Anil, now 13, was one of seven children who were found bruised and battered (pictured right) inside the Fulbari Home and brought back to Nepal last week. The rescue team was led personally by the indomitable Director of EBMF, Shailaja CM.
However, the story was far from over. EBMF has a track record of tracing child trafficking agents and bringing them to justice. Anil’s alleged agent was now in EBMF’s sights. Shailaja felt that the best chance of getting a case filed against him was at a police station remote from his home district where he would lack the protection of the local network of friends, families, possibly even the authorities. Anti-trafficking legislation – which is very good in Nepal – has provision for this remote registration, but in practice, police stations are quick to opt for a quiet life and refer an applicant to the alleged agent and child’s home district.
In the end, and after the personal intervention of the District Superintendent of Police (DSP), Lalitpur Police Headquarters, agreed to register the case. A statement was taken from the boy and from EBMF, but there remained a stumbling block: there was uncertainty over the agent’s true name.
After just a few moments’ thought at the station, Shailaja decided to lay a trap. She picked up her mobile and called the alleged agent. She’d come armed with his telephone number. She asked him if he would be kind enough to come to Lalitpur Police Headquarters the following day to assist with the handover of the boy to his grandmother as he had been named in the paperwork at Fulbari Home. Remarkably, he agreed and the next day arrived at the Headquarters with the boy’s grandmother. Not long after he presented himself at the station, the penny dropped, and realizing his predicament, he asked Shailaja what was going on. She waved him away with a wry smile.
The grandmother, clutching a Bible, said that she was a Christian and as such would be telling the truth – the same Bible had yielded the family photo of Anil. She told of how this alleged agent had been operating for the last ten years, coming to their village every month and taking children, mainly girls, off into oblivion. He had been doing so in collaboration with his wife. What should have been a holy union had become a very unholy one that had refused the grandmother’s repeated requests to retrieve her grandchildren in spite of her offering them money to perform the task.
The alleged agent appeared in Lalitpur District Court on Friday afternoon, and both he and his wife are now in custody in their home district. They could wait for up to a couple of years for their case to come to trial for the law states that that alleged traffickers are not eligible for bail. And if convicted, they could face a maximum sentence of up to 20 years without remission.
I have been privileged this week to witness Shailaja at work, a courageous operator of a caliber that one comes across rarely within the charitable sector. Her NGO can genuinely claim to being involved in the “fight” against child trafficking, and as such, is so worthy of the support of The Esther Benjamins Trust.
Philip Holmes is the Founder/Director of The Esther Benjamins Trust. www.ebtrust.org.uk
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