New Delhi: The Uttar Pradesh shelter home, from where 24 girls were rescued on Sunday night, was ordered to shut down in 2017 but did not comply with the directions.
The state’s women and child welfare minister Rita Bahuguna Joshi on Monday said despite several notices being served to the facility, it did not discontinue its operations, ANI reported.
“After a Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) inspection last year, it was established that Deoria shelter home centre was running illegally without norms. A direction was issued to shift the inmates and shut it. But this order was not followed,” Joshi said.
Acknowledging that there was a delay in taking action, the minister said the home should have been shut earlier and the children should have been shunted out.
The matter came to the fore after a 10-year-old girl, who managed to escape from Maa Vindhyavasini shelter home, approached the police and told officers that many of her fellow inmates were “taken away by people who visited them in luxury cars”.
“People used to come in luxury cars, mostly in the evening. The cars were usually white in colour, but on some days black and red cars also arrived at our shelter home and took away girls, who were above the age of 15. The girls used to return in the wee hours and sob endlessly. Some of them were even sent to nearby houses to take up cleaning and washing tasks,” the girl, who hails from Bihar’s Bettiah, said.
Confirming the minor’s allegations, police superintendent Rohan P Kanay said, “Twenty-four girls were rescued on Sunday from the shelter home at station road in the name of Ma Vindhyawasini Mahila Prakishan evam Samaj Sewa Sansthan, which has 42 inmates. Eighteen inmates are still missing. We have sealed it.”
Girija Tripathi and her husband Mohan Tripathi, who operated the shelter home, and its superintendent Kanchanlata have been arrested.
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