DEORIA: Three children from the shelter home in UP’s Deoria, where inmates were allegedly abused and trafficked, were adopted and sent to Spain and France in February this year. A special investigation team (SIT) of the UP police made these disclosure in the chargesheet submitted to the Allahabad HC last week.

Police have invoked additional sections under the juvenile justice act as well as charges of forgery, criminal conspiracy and human trafficking against the accused. The accused, who have been arrested, include Girijia Tripathi, owner of the Maa Vindhyavasini Mahila and Balika Sanrakshan Griha shelter, her husband Mohan Tripathi, her son-in-law Sanjiv, her daughter Kanchanlata, a quack named Yogendra Kumar Dubey, a nurse Hayat Afroz, and a shelter employee Pradip.

In August this year, Deoria police held a press conference to expose the abuse at the home after an 11-year-old escaped and went to them with complaints of sexual abuse, corporal punishment and trafficking at the shelter. Some girls were forced into marriages, and a number are missing. The shelter’s licence had been suspended in June 2017 but it continued to function illegally.

TOI has accessed the probe details, and the team found that Girija Tripathi hired Dubey to prepare a medical examination report so that the children could be adopted by families abroad under the inter-country adoption programme of Central Adoption Resource Authority, a statutory body of the women and child development ministry.

Arvind, a four-year-old orphan, was adopted by Marta Guasch Pages in Barcelona. Siblings Shamima, 7, and Sakina, 9, were sent to a French couple, Bruno Bernard Raymond Pottiex and Marie Celine Marthe Sabine Pavy.

