Two days after Kiswar Jahan sent off her 15-year-old son Irfan Shaikh to a madrasa in Maharashtra, she heard that he had been stopped at a railway station in Madhya Pradesh and detained.
Shaikh was among 100-odd children from Bagdahara village going to the madrasa in Latur district. They were not alone. They were accompanied on the long train journey by a teacher from the madrasa.
But in Katni, a team of railway police and child welfare officers stopped the train and “rescued” 163 children from Araria travelling to madrasas in different groups on the suspicion that they were being trafficked.
Most parents did not have the means to rush to Madhya Pradesh. Jahan, a widow, is poor too but she dug into her savings to buy a train ticket.
On April 13, she and 40 others travelled to Madhya Pradesh to convince the authorities that the children were not being forced into labour. “I showed all the documents to prove that he is my son,” said Jahan. “But they did not release him. They said go back home. We will send your son later,” she said.
In the 13 days that he spent at the government home in Jabalpur, Irfan Shaikh recalled being asked several questions. “They asked me about my parents, why I travel so far to study in a madrasa,” he said. “Aur pucha ki aatanqwadi ban ne ja rahe ho kya wahan.” And then they asked whether I was going there to become a terrorist.
Manish Tiwari, chairperson of Jabalpur’s Child Welfare Committee, defended the line of questioning. “What is wrong with that? The police also asked them this,” he said. “Given today’s environment, this is normal. Since these are children traveling to a madrasa, we have to verify everything.”
Eventually, all 163 children from Araria were released, when the Madhya Pradesh child welfare officers and police found no evidence of trafficking.
This was not a one-off case.
As Scroll has reported, this year alone, 375 children have been intercepted and detained from trains by authorities in nine instances, on the suspicion that they were being trafficked. In eight cases, all the children were
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