Source: The Sangai Express
Imphal, February 08 2010:
Sustained efforts by child welfare activists and State's Social Welfare Department to bring back the 19 children reportedly rescued from an unauthorised children home in Chennai finally bore fruit as the kids reached here safely this morning.
Soon after their arrival from Guwahati to Imphal in a passenger bus, the children were taken away to a children home at Takyel, where newspersons were prevented from interacting with the kids with the Social Welfare Department officials citing travel fatigue of the children.
The officials maintained that the children, belonging to Bishnupur and Imphal West district, would be handed over to their respective parents/guardian tomorrow after completion of procedural counselling including on the ills of child trafficking as well as medical check-up.
Talking to some newspersons, L Borni said she entrusted custody of her 9-year-old daughter to one Herojit Singh with the expectation that the child would receive education free of cost as was promised by Herojit.
"I also gave some amount to him with a high hope that my daughter will get good education in the big city.
But my dreams are shattered as the children were not treated well by the home runners," the mother from Lourembam village in Bishnupur district, lamented.
A small girl from Irom Meijrao village in Imphal West whose younger sister was among the rescued kids quipped "she was taken by those people who told lie to my parents.
Now I will play and eat together with my younger sister" .
On the otherhand, the state government is informed to be planning to bring back another 54 kids who along with 22 children from neighbouring Assam were rescued from an unlicensed home in Kanya Kumari recently.