DEORIA: The 12-year-old girl who exposed the sordid activities in the illegal shelter home here, leading to the rescue of 24 inmates, has been facing hardships ever since her mother died when she was just two. A native of Bettiah in Bihar , the girl told Deoria SP Rohan P Kanay that a year after her mother’s death, her father remarried.

The child was packed off by her father to her maternal grandmother’s home in Bettiah after her stepmother refused to keep her. According to Kanay, her grandmother looked after her till she turned nine. But soon after, the grandmother threw the child out of her home, holding her responsible for her mother’s death.

Abandoned by all relatives, the hapless girl roamed around for several days till a GRP jawan spotted her near railway tracks in an area bordering Bihar. From there she was sent to Ma Vindhyavasini Balika Sanrakshan Griha, where she stayed for the next three years. After she fled from the shelter home on Sunday night, she reached the women’s police station which was a kilometre away with the help of a local.

Kanay told TOI that after the girl revealed the exploitation of inmates to him, a police team was dispatched to raid the shelter home on Sunday night. The child told mediapersons that the older inmates used to be taken away in cars with ‘Madamji’ (shelter home manager Girija Tripathi) around 4pm and dropped back only the next morning.

She added that the cars used to be of different colours “like red, black and grey and looked expensive”. “After returning, the ‘didis’ (older inamtes) used to cry on seeing and meeting us… the younger girls were forced to sweep the floor and do other household work. We were beaten up by different men for not following their diktats,” she said.

