Veena Kondal is a ray of hope, compassion for abandoned children in Gurdaspur

Gurdaspur’s Good Samaritan Veena Kondal, wife of a retired Army officer, believes that every child makes his or her own peace with abandonment. “That is called growing up,” she says.

She has given refuge to hundreds of abandoned children found loitering in trains, buses and streets, with nowhere to go and nobody to take care of them. Her experience with them tells her that the absence of a parent is like an unending tempest, drowning the child in an ocean of unmet expectations.

Kondal has saved hundreds of abandoned children from a life on streets and reunited them with their parents after locating them. If she was unable to find their parents, she passed them on to children’s homes. Boys were handed over to the Children’s Home, Gurdaspur, while girls were sent to a similar facility in Jalandhar. She followed a laid-down procedure and fully abided by the rules.

Veena has spent considerable time as a member of the Gurdaspur Child Welfare Committee (CWC). She has also served for eight years as a member of the Juvenile Justice Board and also remained its officiating chairperson for several years. All these years, she refused to accept any salary or honorarium. She left after the advent of Covid-19. During her tenure, she was in close contact with government agencies and social organisations, particularly those based in other states.

She shared how it all started. Earlier, long-distance trains coming from Delhi and other southern states used to terminate at Pathankot. “Being a sensitive area, the GRP thoroughly checked these trains at Pathankot. Officials would often find children sitting in corners of coaches when everybody had left. They were kids who had run away from domestic violence in their homes, or constantly had to suffer mental, social and physical abuse. The number of such children had increased significantly after the Covid-19 pandemic. The contagion had led to widespread job losses with families sending their kids to cities for work, consequently increasing their vulnerability,” she said.

Veena has had a special affinity for such kids as she knew that they were always at a high risk of being exploited or forced into begging. “Thousands of children across the country board trains with no destination in mind, just to escape poverty and abuse at home,” she said. “There has been a constant increase in children fleeing their homes and ending up alone in cities like Pathankot and Gurdaspur. They are vulnerable to poverty and trafficking,” she added.

One particular instance that she remembers vividly is when she rescued a Pakistani hearing and visually impaired boy, who was arrested at Wagah. “We located his parents in Rawalpindi through a Pakistan-based NGO called IDHI foundation,” she said. This foundation is Pakistan’s largest non-profit social organisation and offers a variety of humanitarian services. Another success story she is proud of is of a boy she groomed, who later joined the Army.

Without an iota of doubt, the lady with the lamp of compassion has successfully donned the role of a humanitarian, volunteer and a benefactor.