Exonerating Muslim orphanages in Kerala of child trafficking charges going back to 2014, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) has filed a closure report in the Ernakulam Chief Judicial Magistrate Court.

In the report submitted to the court, CBI has stated that parents and guardians of minor children had insisted that they had sent their children to Kerala hoping that they would get educated, free food and other facilities free of cost. In the report, they have stated that “no kind of exploitation was noticed by any witness”.

The sensational case saw the Railway Police detaining 589 children — who had arrived in two trains from Bihar, Jharkhand and West Bengal —in May 2014 at the Palakkad Junction railway station. All the detained children were from extremely poor families and the majority of them did not have documents to prove their identity. However, some of the children had identity cards of Mukkam Muslim Orphanage in Kozhikode.