However, a recent government investigation managed to track down Bastola and throw some light on the Jayan Heavenly Ophanage. It emerged that Bastola was publicity shy perhaps because not all the children at the orphanage were actually orphans. Kaski District Administration last week evicted the children after finding that they had been compelled to take up Christianity. The children were handed back to their parents.The orphanage has been shut as investigations showed that it had not been formally registered. Three other such organizations have also been shut down by the authorities in the past week as they had not completed the process required for opening children's homes.
All children's homes are required to complete the process specified by the "Standard for Operation and Management of Residential Child Care Homes 2012". And according to the Organizations Registration Act 1977, an organisation should register with the District Administration before operating legally. Furthermore, when an organisation is to operate as a child care home, this should be stated specifically at the time of registration.
Orphanages run by Sewa Nepal, Prabhat Transforming Dalit Society and Dristi Nepal are among the ones that have been shut. Seven children residing at Dristi Nepal have been sent back to their respective homes or families. Dristi agreed to provide the children with aid materials to take home whereas the children rescued from Prabhat and Sewa were relocated with CIWIN and Jyoti Centre.
Following the closures, there are now 59 children's homes left in Kaski.
Government investigations show that not all the children's homes come out clean when it comes to religion. Child rights officer Bharat Raj Baral from the District Children's Welfare Committee, which has been carrying out the investigations, said there are cases where children have been compelled to take up Christianity.
According to Baral, the children would be forced to recite Christian prayers before their meals and the only religious book from the library they would be given to read was the Bible.
As most children's homes have not met the standards, only four of them are listed as A-grade. "The fact that 23 organizations are B-grade and the rest C and D shows that residential children's homes have not met the specified criteria," states the investigation report.
When organizations fail to provide religious independence to the children a letter would be promptly sent to them to rectify the situation, informed Baral. "If they don't comply, we will take action per the law."
The existing criteria approve sheltering only those children in such homes who don't have any parent. Most children in a majority of children's homes in Kaski have single mothers.
In a bid to discourage this trend, the local administration and the Children's Welfare Committee had issued some directives to the children's homes last year also. "It was because of this that this year there were fewer such children," explained Baral. "Last year we found that 28.4 percent of the children had both parents living but this year this percentage is down to 24.5," he added.
Every year a few children's homes are shut down for not meeting the criteria, but new ones are also getting registered.
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