‘No’ to stay on CBI probe

The Supreme Court on Friday said it does not want to stay a CBI probe ordered by the Kerala High Court into the alleged trafficking of children to orphanages in Kerala from West Bengal, Bihar, and Jharkhand.

“We don't know whether you are aware of this... but trafficking is a huge problem, especially to States like Kerala,” Justice Madan B. Lokur, who heads the Supreme Court's Social Justice bench, observed.

The court was hearing a challenge by two Kerala orphanages — Mukkam Muslim Orphanage in Kozhikode and Vettathur Anwarul Orphanage in Malappuram – against the High Court’s order for a CBI probe.

Senior advocate Nagehswar Rao, who represented the two organisations, attempted to convince the court that most orphanages in the State were respectable institutions providing food, care and education to children.

He said these institutions, which number to 1,800 in the State, were regularly monitored.

“But you can't pick and choose, say investigate this one and don’t investigate that,” Justice Lokur reacted, while issuing notice to the Centre.

The High Court in July this year said repeated incidents of child trafficking in the State required an immediate investigation by a central agency into the workings of the orphanages.

The incident which set alarms bells ringing in the State happened in the last week of May 2014 when the Railway Police in Palakkad detained 589 children in a suspected trafficking case. The children had arrived in two trains at the Palakkad Junction.

The first batch of 466 children, which reached Palakkad by Patna-Ernakulam Express, was from Bihar and Jharkhand.

The second group of 123 children was from West Bengal. Most of them were aged below 12, without train tickets and cramped together without food or water in the train.

Though some of the children produced identity cards of Mukkam and Vettathur orphanages, the majority had no records to identify themselves.