NEW DELHI: Expressing concern over the plight of children in shelter homes who are subjected to torture and sexual assault as revealed in the horrific incidents in Muzaffarpur and Deoria, the Supreme Court on Tuesday proposed to set up an oversight committee at Centre and state level to keep an eye on the functioning of such homes.

A bench of Justices Madan B Lokur, S Abdul Nazeer, and Deepak Gupta termed the recent incident as disgusting and appealed the governments to take a human and sympathetic approach towards children for their protection and welfare. It asked the Centre to respond on setting up of the committee after none of the state governments opposed the suggestion of the bench.

Advocate Aparna Bhatt, who is assisting the court as amicus curiae , told the bench that state of affairs in shelter homes and child care unit was “appalling” and pleaded the court to intervene and pass directions for setting things right. She informed the bench that Child Line India foundation had conducted a survey of 9589 such homes last year operating across the country and filed a comprehensive report profiling the homes and children living there.

As per the report, there are around 4.61 lakh children living in such homes and 8744 of them were run and managed by NGOs and 845 homes were government supported homes. Bhatt also brought to courts notice the discrepancies on the number of children in shelter homes as the government claimed that only 2.6 lakh children are living in such homes. She told the bench that only 48 percent of homes are registered so far despite the apex court’s direction passed in 2013 making it mandatory for all child care home to get registered under various provisions of Juvenile Justice Act.

The amicus also emphasised the need to streamline adoption policy in the country as the present procedure is too lengthy and time-consuming.

The court after hearing all the sides requested the Centre to take a stand on whether an independent committee should be set up to monitor the functioning of child care units and give suggestion on the composition of the committee at Centre and state levels. In shelter home case for homeless people, the apex court has already set up a committee in all states to monitor construction of homes.

The Centre also relied on NGO’s survey and told the bench that chief secretaries of all states and UTs have been requested to conduct the inspection of homes under the supervision of district magistrate and send a report by September 15 in the wake of Muzaffarpur incident,

“In all the 9589 CCIs and homes covered under the study, it was found that there were 9382 children in conflict with the law, among them 6928 were boys while 2454 were girls. The number of children in need of care and protection has been found to be 369,267. Information regarding registration of cases under Protection of Children against Sexual Offence Act has been collected. The number of children found to be victims of sexual abuse is 1576,” the Centre said in its affidavit.

