M A I N   N E W S

A Tribune Investigation
Homes without care - I
Here, 6-yr-olds are treated like hardened criminals
Chitleen K Sethi
Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, June 18
In gross violation of the Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Act 2000, the Department of Social Security has housed more than 200 juvenile delinquents in its observation homes (sudhaar ghar) in pathetic condition, with inmates witness to the apathy of the officers concerned.

The children, some as young as six and seven years old, are living in inhuman conditions, surviving on low-quality food with no facility for education, recreation and virtually no medical aid.

While a majority of the inmates lodged in these homes at Ludhiana, Faridkot, Hoshiarpur (all three for boys) and Jalandhar (girls) are being tried for petty crimes, they are being treated like hardened criminals in jails.

In Faridkot, 35 inmates are cramped in three dingy cubicles of a house with a grill gate locking them inside. The house, incidentally, belongs to a former employee of the department and he ensures that the department pays Rs 8000 as rent for the premises.

Most of the inmates here are suffering from scabies (a skin disease) and only after the insistence of the inmates did the in charge get a doctor to see them. Doctors don’t visit these homes regularly though the staff everywhere claimed that they had in house pharmacists who give medicines. “Even in case of serious injuries we have to wait for days before a doctor comes,” reported inmates at Faridkot and Ludhiana.

Bathrooms without doors remain full of filth with the overpowering stench spread through the rooms. Due to an acute shortage of staff the inmates act as sweepers, cooks and in some cases even run errands for the staff.

In Hoshiarpur, there is a single cook for 94 inmates and many of them help in preparing food. The quality of food is the worst in Ludhiana where the inmates claimed the tea that is served in the evenings has worms floating in it.

While the Juvenile Justice Act states that inmates of different age groups should be segregated in different rooms, in reality, seven year olds are cohabiting with the older lot, most of who belong to adult gangs. “Some of the older ones are over 18 years. There is every possibility of younger ones being bullied and even sexually abused,” admitted an employee at the observation home in Ludhiana, which has 42 inmates.

At Ludhiana and Hoshiarpur children are cramped into two-three rooms, with many other rooms locked as “stores”. The in-charge at Hoshairpur said rooms were available but these could not be used due to a missing security wall. The proposal seeking funds for the construction of the wall has been pending with the directorate for more than one year!

None of the observation homes has a full time superintendent with the posts lying vacant for years. Work is managed through caretakers, clerks and additional charge holders. A superintendent at Jalandhar is managing four institutes of the department! The observation home here is for girls and 25 of them are locked up in one small room. The superintendent’s proposal for a larger room has been hanging fire in the directorate.

In most homes there are no teachers or a facility for vocational training.

In Ludhiana, a teacher visits the home each day but according to the inmates does not teach anything. There are no indoor games anywhere. Functioning water coolers, fridges, desert coolers and even fans and tube-lights are luxuries.

Director, Social Security, Rakhi Gupta Bhandari has never visited any of these observation homes nor has she bothered to send any one from the department to inspect them.

While the Act clearly states that the Juvenile Justice Board (which tries these children) should meet within the premises of the observation home (to give the child a homely environment even when he is being tried) this does not happen except in Ludhiana.

The board, headed by the Chief Judicial Magistrate of the district, would have done a lot of good, had its members seen for themselves the state of the observation homes where they send these children for remand. Minister for Social Security Swarna Ram said whenever a shortcoming was highlighted he took immediate action.