Appalled by lack of coordination between police and social welfare department officials in solving scores of child missing cases by verifying the identities of children lodged in recognised and unrecognised child care homes across the State, the Madras High Court Bench here on Wednesday directed the Social Welfare Secretary to come out with a proposal on conducting a mega DNA test drive.
Justices S. Nagamuthu and M.V. Muralidaran passed the order after Madurai Collector Veera Raghava Rao and Commissioner of Police Shailesh Kumar Yadav conceded that 26 out of 58 child care homes in the district were unregistered and that 1,066 children were lodged in them. It was also brought to the notice of the court that applications made by 14 of those homes for registration were pending consideration.
The judges said: “On one hand, courts are flooded with habeas corpus petitions relating to unsolved child missing cases and on the other, scores of children have been lodged in unrecognised homes without ascertaining their parentage.”
Clueless parents
The observations were made during the hearing of a habeas corpus petition filed by M. Barakkath Nisha accusing her former husband, whom she had divorced four years ago, of having sold their seven-year-old daughter and not letting her see the child despite the visitation rights granted to her as per a civil court decree. Enquiries made by the judges with the man revealed that he too was not aware of the whereabouts of the child.
The man told the court that he had handed over the custody of the child to his father who, in turn, lodged the child in a private child care home at Arasaradi here. After his father’s death, the administrator of the home denied having admitted the child.
However, on court directions in the present petition, the police found that the administrator of the home had admitted the child to a private hospital for treatment, from where she was shifted to another unregistered home at Peikulam.
It was revealed that Peikulam home had 102 inmates and the District Social Welfare Officer and the Child Welfare Committee recently handed over the custody of 60 children to people who claimed to be their parents and shifted the other children, including the petitioner’s daughter, to a registered home.
When the judges wanted to know whether DNA tests were conducted before handing over those children to the claimants, the officials replied in the negative.
They also told the court that the management of Peikulam home had entered the name of the girl as Joyce Glory in the records though her real name was M. Taslima alias Nasima. Taken aback by the submission, Mr. Justice Nagamuthu said: “Can there be a bigger racket than this? We have been hearing this habeas corpus petition for months together and the child has been shifted from one home to another after changing her name as well as the religion. This cannot be allowed to continue.”
Wondering how many more children had been subjected to such a situation, the judges recorded the submission of Madurai Collector that he would order closure of all unauthorised homes and called for details of registered and unregistered homes in Kanniyakumari, Tirunelveli, Thoothukudi, Dindigul, Theni, Ramanathapuram, Virudhunagar, Sivaganga, Pudukkottai, Thanjavur, Tiruchi and Karur districts and the number of children lodged there.
When Mr. Justice Nagamuthu wanted to know to why the blood samples of parents who had lodged child missing complaints and the inmates of the homes could not be taken for DNA analysis, Mr. Yadav told the court that there was only one Forensic Sciences Laboratory in Chennai and it was unable to meet the requirements of investigators from across the State. The judges directed the Social Welfare Secretary to come up with a proposal by Friday on augmenting the DNA test facility. They also stressed the need for creating awareness among people ofhttp://trackthemissingchild. gov. in/trackchild/ wellcome/a national portal for missing and vulnerable children which could be used by parents of missing children to search their children.
