27 Manipuri Kids Rescued From Mayiladuthurai in Tamil Nadu

By V Mayilvaganan

Nagapattinam, Mar 28 : Two months after nearly 100 children from Manipur and Assam were rescued from homes in Kanyakumari and Chennai, officials stumbled upon 27 Manipuri children, kept illegally at a home near Mayiladuthurai in Nagapattinam district, on Friday.

The children, between 5 and 12 years of age, were kept in a rented house at Akkur Madappuram, near Keezhayur, for the past seven months. Henry (38), who ran the home, claimed that the children, nine of them girls, were left in his custody by their parents and relatives at Bethel Development Trust, a home he ran in Manipur.

Henry told the Child Welfare Committee officials that he had decided to shift the home to Tamil Nadu due to Maoist activities in Manipur. However, he did not possess the mandatory affidavits from the parents or the relatives of the kids, said S Venkatraman, probationary officer of the state-run Social Defence Department.

The girls were sent to the reception unit run by the Social Defence Department in Tiruchi and the boys to a home in Thanjavur, Venkatraman said.
The officials came to know about the presence of the kids when they went to the home for inspection as Henry had applied for approval for the same.