Priest Arrested in Tamil Nadu with 18 Children UPDATED

Note to anyone wanting to start an orphanage: Do not use the Laura Silsby method (find children first, then find orphanage location, then consider filing legal papers)! Also, don’t use the excuse that everyone else is doing it, so why not me!

“A Catholic priest was arrested and 18 children, including three girls, were rescued from a church in Tamil Nadu’s Kanyakumari district after authorities claimed they were trafficked.

Father Anthony Claret was arrested Saturday following a raid on St Therese of Child Jesus Church Manchakonam in Kottar diocese to rescue the children, officials said.

An executive identified as Jayakumar with the non-government organization Blessing Trust was also arrested yesterday in connection with the raid, they said.

Kannyakumari district collector Sreenivasan Nagarajan said “our preliminary investigation revealed that the children, 12 of them under 10 years, were brought from Orissa illegally.”

The children were sent from the NGO and kept on the church premises. Jayakumar is a friend of the priest, who wanted to start a home for destitute children “without following the legal procedures,” Nagarajan said.

He said the children, rescued after a police tip-off, have been sent to government-run shelter homes.

The official said both the NGO, based in Mettupalayam in Coimbatore rural district, and the priest violated the norms and were liable for prosecution and imprisonment if charges were proved.

“Under the Juvenile Justice [Care and Protection of Children] Act, it is an offense to keep children from other states without proper registration,” he explained.

According to Devikumari, the Kanyakumari district social welfare officer, the priest told officials that he was planning to set up a home for destitute children and was looking for a place.

She said “several persons are running charity homes for children in the state without the proper license. We doubt that an NGO racket is indulging in trafficking of children from other states.”

The authorities today set up a five-member Child Welfare Committee in Kanyakumari following the incident.

Diocesan officials, however, did not respond to queries.

“Only the bishop will speak on this issue,” said an official who did not disclose his identity. The bishop was not available for comment.”

Police arrest priest in trafficking claim

[UCA News 6/25/12 by  Thiruvanananthapuram]

They should know better than to take kids before filing paperwork and establishing a building for an orphanage. There is no excuse for this.

REFORM Puzzle Piece

Update: “Eighteen children, who were rescued from a church in Kanyakumari district of Tamil Nadu on June 23, reunited with their parents on Friday after reaching Paralakhemundi, the Gajapati district headquarter town. The other group of 18 children from the state, who were among the 19 rescued in Coimbatore, is expected to reach Odisha on Saturday.

“The child welfare committee (CWC) handed over the 18 rescued children to their parents after their health check-up,” Gajapati district collector R P Singh said.

After they reached Berhampur via a train from Chennai, they were shifted to a childcare home near Paralakhemundi for health examination and formal interrogation.

Bhagyalaxmi Nayak, who was part of the four-member team from Odisha that went to the south Indian state to bring back the children, said the kids had no idea about where they were headed to when they had left Odisha. They were lured with the promise of a good education and upbringing. “During my three days with the children, what I gathered is that they had left Odisha only recently, maybe a week or 10 days ago. They were mostly on the move during these days and did not face torture. When we met them and told them about coming back home, their mood became jubilant, probably because they had become homesick,” she said.

Bhagyalaxmi said some of the children confided that one Ayub Nayak (now in police custody) took them to Coimbatore by train.

The children aged between three to 10 years from Gumma and Seranga areas in the district were allegedly taken by Nayak on June 16 for “free education”. The kids were rescued by the Kanyakumari police from a church at Maniakonam.

Nayak has reportedly confessed to have ferried the children with their parents’ consent. “We are still verifying the intention behind the trafficking,” said SP (Gajapati) Sarthak Sarangi.

Nayak reportedly told police that his three children too were studying in Coimbatore for the last three years. Some of the parents had accompanied the children to Coimbatore, he told police.

Meanwhile, Bajrang Dal on Friday demanded a judicial probe into the “church-sponsored” trafficking. “A judicial probe should be instituted within a specific time frame to probe and crack the entire gamut of such sinister networks,” Bajrang Dal convenor Subhash Chauhan said in a statement. Chauhan said the role of church-funded schools located in remote parts of Odisha should be brought under the scanner as some of the recent incidents of child trafficking to Tamil Nadu indicates links with these schools, he said.”

18 ‘trafficked’ children reunite with family

[Times of India 6/29/12 by Ashok Pradhan]