Indian Police have rescued twenty-four girls from an illegal care home in Northern India and arrested four others for sexual abuse.
Police moved in after a young girl escaped and reported that she was sexually exploited in the home.
Police said four people were arrested on suspicion of trafficking and sexual abuse and closed the home that has been operating in Deoria district in northern Uttar Pradesh, 325 km from the state capital Lucknow.
This is the second case of sexual abuse in homes for destitute children in less than a month as Police also reported that 29 girls were alleged to have been raped and tortured in Bihar state.
The incident sparked a national outrage as Indians demanded that such homes be investigated.
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Human rights campaigners have said sexual abuse as well as physical abuse is common in care homes, where many children are not orphans but placed in care by parents who are too poor to feed, clothe and shelter them.
Reporting on the arrest, a senior police official said the shelter home had been sealed and the people who managed it have been arrested although no details were given about the other two arrested.
A case of alleged trafficking and illegal adoption has been registered against the home owners.
Local media also reported that 18 girls went missing from the Uttar Pradesh shelter home although the police did not comment on that.
Confirming the arrests, Deoria district magistrate Amit Kishore said the authorities had previously revoked the shelter home’s license, but it had remained open without their knowledge.
Media reports said Uttar Pradesh’s Women and Child Welfare Department revoked the license in June 2017 after detecting large-scale irregularities being carried out there.
According to the National Commission for the Protection of Child rights, India has almost 7,300 care shelters housing some 230,000 children. About 1,300 of them operate illegally and are prone to sexual abuse and other forms of violence against the children as they operate illegally with little or no oversight.
India’s Supreme Court criticized the state government in Bihar for allowing such shelters to run without oversight.
“You are financing these shelter homes. But such incidents are happening.” the court said.
India is more or less known as the rape capital of the world and an average of 100 cases of sexual abuse against women and children have been repotted on a daily basis since 2016.
The Indian government has been trying to curb the menace by tightening its rape laws; it introduced the death penalty this year for people who rape girls under the age of 12.