Thursday Titbits

Few tit bits news on this Thursday.

1. You all must have seen media reports on the children’s shelter home, which were used as sex centres. The news came out of about one in Muzaffarpur (Bihar) and one in Deoria (UP). News about these shelter homes was really shocking. It turns out that the agency which was appointed for pan India mapping and auditing of children’s homes as per  the directive of Supreme Court (SC), has been denied access  in 9 states including Bihar & UP. Other states are Delhi, Chattisgarh , Himachal Pradesh, Manipur, Mehghalaya, Kerala and West Bengal. This has happened despite the National Commission for Protection of Child Rights (NCPCR) and Ministry of Women and Child Development writing to all the states to comply with the directive of SC. It only means that in the eyes of the law makers of certain states this issue is not important or the officials in the requisite state ministry are trying to shield the prompters of certain shelter homes. The mentioned state govts are of the opinion they will do the audit themselves and they do not want independent agency to handle the audits of shelter homes in their states. These types of statements give rise to the doubt there must be some hanky panky business going in the shelter homes.                                        According to data available with NCPCR there are about 5850 registered child care institutions in the country, and there are about 1300 centres which are running as unregistered. So far the appointed agency has carried out audit of about 3000 institutions across states.  Majority of these are run by Non Government Organisations (NGOs), and in most of them there will be involvement of some politicians directly or  indirectly. In Muzaffarpur case, one state minister had to resign as there were reports about the link of her husband with this case. In the case of Deoria case, the lady who was running the shelter home sex racket has a rags to riches story. She was running the shelter through one NGO. Earlier she was an ordinary house wife, who began as a humble factory worker, who could stitch to earn some extra bucks. Later on after starting the shelter home, she became a high profile local celebrity who started flaunting her connections with high places. It is rumoured that she was involved in this type of shelter homes in many places in UP.                                                                                                                                           Looks like this issue is going to snowball and it will be of no surprise that in the years to come  this might become a major issue across  the states.
2. Other news which caught my eyes was that- Does a Muslim husband has got no right to perform the last rights (Kirya or in some communities 13th day rite) of his Hindu wife. It so happened  last week in the national capital, the Hindu wife was cremated at Nigam Bodh Ghat and after that  a hall was booked on 6th Aug for the ceremony for the ceremony to be held on 12th Aug, the hall is being managed by  Chitranjan Park Kali Mandir Society, the requisite  charges were also paid  in advance. But after a day or so the family got the phone call from the said society, and the caller said that the booking is cancelled as the said rituals can not be performed in their hall. On being asked what is the reason, the answer was ” you can well understand “, which indirectly implied that the Society will not allow Muslim to be the part of  the rituals. The President of the Society later made the statement that ” We can not change Hindu religious rules”. The dead woman’s daughter then said we did not have any problem while cremating her at Nigam Bodh Ghat, managed by Municipal Corporation.  I just fail to understand, how a Society run by learned Bengalis can behave like this, and mind it the dead woman by birth was Bengali, so what happens if she was married to Muslim. She was cremated as per Hindu rituals, then why she could not be given a decent farewell from this world, if her family wanted to do her last rites as per Hindu rituals at a place manged by Hindus. However,  a socio-cultural organisation offered to host the ceremony.                                        I think these types of incidents creates a wedge between the communities and  definitely leave a bad taste.

Waiting for your feed backs/comments/views on above topics.