CHENNAI: Child protection officers and Childline volunteers rescued an 11-year-old boy, from Bihar , who they suspect had been trafficked after he escaped from a madrassa in Kodungaiyur.The boy was found by Childline volunteers near Avadi railway station on Wednesday and produced before the child welfare committee , Chennai, on Saturday.“At the time of rescue, the only information the child could tell us was he stayed in a madrassa,” said a member of the district child protection unit (DCPU).A chit in his pocket that finally led the team to madrassa Usman Bin Affan in Kodungaiyur. Although staff at the religious residential school said the boy studied at their facility, they had no documents to show who admitted him there or details of his family.One of the teachers recalled a man, who identified himself as his uncle, bringing the child in early July. “When we asked teachers for their identity cards, they had none,” said a DCPU staff.The child was housed in an open shelter for three days. Based on the information he gave, officials contacted his family in Deolia, Bihar. A man, who identified himself as his brother, came to claim him on Saturday. “We sent the child back home with him after checking their Aadhaar and ration cards,” said CWC member Sheila Charles Mohan. The committee said it would conduct an inspection of the madrassa soon, where 60 other children, most of them from impoverished districts in Bihar, Assam, Odisha and West Bengal are housed.Since January, Railway Childline, Government Railway Police and the DCPU have rescued at least 25 children from Chennai who escaped from madrassas and Veda pathshalas located in the city or other districts. In Chennai, most of them had escaped from schools in Kodungaiyur, Adyar and Anna Nagar. “All of them were in the 9-13 years age group with little or no formal education. They were from poor families,” said a co-ordinator of Railway Childline. While a majority of them were sent back to their families, a few of them are in the government boys’ home, Royapuram.In 2014, a Madras high court bench, headed by then Chief Justice Sanjay Kishan Kaul, had directed the state government to inspect and prepare a data on all religious bodies with residential facilities to ensure transparency, accountability and documentation of children in such institutions to protect them from exploitation or abuse The order was based on a petition filed by advocacy group ChangeIndia, which also came up with a list of suggestions. When the state government pointed out this was a “religious matter”, it got an earful from the bench, which said the issue pertained to children and the inspection should not be delayed on the pretext of “religious sensitivity”. Four years on, the state continues to be clueless on the number of such facilities.R Vidyasagar, former child protection specialist, Unicef, said the minimum standards required for a child care institution under the Juvenile Justice Act, 2015, should apply to these schools too. “Orphanages have been reined in, but there is no monitoring mechanism for these institutions. The government can’t cite religion as an excuse to look away,” he said.

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