Rehabilitation of child beggars a challenge

BANGALORE: With no previous case to compare it with, the city police are grappling with the rehabilitation of more than 210 children they rescued on December 2, 2011 from begging on the streets. With representatives from the police department, Child Welfare Committee (CWC) and eight other non-governmental organisations working together, the focus is primarily to ensure the safest rehabilitation for these children.“We are learning on the case. We need a new process of investigation because we have not come across such a case especially on this scale,” said Pranab Mohanty, Joint Commissioner of Police, Crime, West Division. He explained that the key questions that need to be answered are why these children were found begging, whether this is part of a bigger racket involving child trafficking and how to go about rehabilitating the rescued children.The Child Welfare Committee, a quasi-judicial body is preparing reports for every child rescued, by talking to the child and those claiming to be his parents. Meena Jain, Chairperson of Child Welfare Committee, said that this procedure is called a ‘social investigation’ which is part of the procedure specified by the Juvenile Justice Act.  Once the CWC generates a report for each child, the police intervenes if there are any irregularities in any case. Meena Jain said that the fundamental challenge for her committee is in matching documents produced by those claiming to be the parents of children. “There are false or no documents in most cases. We are not comfortable with the documents given by the adults who come to claim children as their own. And this is a matter of concern,” said Jain.She also said that in the case of some children who have been sent to schools, it has been found that some of them have returned to the streets instead of attending school. “We have sent case workers to check if these children are going to schools,” she said. With a recent rescue operation in Yelahanka where some more children and women were rescued, she said it is possible that this entire case is part of a bigger racket.“What we want people to refrain from giving money to child beggars. They should click their pictures and send them to police. It will help us in our probe,” said Jain.