After the members of Mother Teresa’s Missionaries of Charity were accused of child trafficking, and the Roman Catholic Church came out in support of former, alleging that the nun was innocent and was forced to make a confession, the Ranchi Police on Saturday, 14 July, put out a short video of her confessing to her active role in the racket.
In the video accessed by News18, the nun admits to selling two babies and claims that she has no idea about their whereabouts.
A senior church official had earlier blamed the police and said the accused nun was innocent and was forced to make a confession.
The nun has told their lawyer that she was made to sign under force. She was pressurised. The sisters are absolutely innocent. I am appealing to all, allow them to do their work in peace.Bishop Theodore Mascarenhas of Ranchi told NDTV
The Bishop also called out the police for treating the organisation as a “criminal gang”.
3 Children Recovered
Ranchi Senior Superintendent of Police Ashish Gupta told ANI on Saturday that three out of the four children have been recovered and both the nuns have been arrested.
On 4 July, a woman staffer, Anima Indwar, of Ranchi’s Nirmal Hriday shelter was arrested, while two others, including a nun, were been detained on charges of trafficking an infant. The shelter for unwed mothers in Ranchi is run by the Mother Teresa-established Missionaries of Charity.
According to a report in India Today, the women in custody revealed that in certain cases they stole babies for a price. The police have launched an investigation based on the confession.
Around 25 people, belonging to a group called India First, staged a protest outside the Missionaries of Charity building on 9 July, demanding a CBI probe into the allegations, The Indian Express reported.
We believe the racket is much bigger. We demand a CBI investigation into the case.Sourav Kumar Mishra, India First, to The Indian Express
Following the revelations, Jharkhand’s Child Rights body has also asked for a search at all the centres of Missionaries of Charity.
Police Claims Child Sold For Rs 50,000
The Ranchi police said they have recovered one baby from the grip of Missionaries of Charity, which has been in the news for selling newborns to childless couples in Jharkhand, reported Financial Express.
The recovered baby, who was born in December 2017, was going to be sold for Rs 50,000 to a childless couple, FE reported, quoting the police. The report also said that the child who was born to a lady staying at the charity home did not have any records in their registers.
We are in a shock. The Missionaries of Charity all over the world is shocked.Sunita Kumar, Spokesperson told News18
Meanwhile, senior journalist Rajdeep Sardesai’s tweet on the scandal has come under fire. Sardesai tweeted, “Missionaries of Charity baby selling scandal is shocking. But should the criminal act of a few be allowed to tarnish legacy of Mother Teresa or to make this about ‘Christianity’ instead of crime? Would a robbery in Tirupati temple tomorrow become about Hinduism?”
What Transpired?
The shelter came under the scanner after Rupa Verma, the chairperson of the Child Welfare Committee, filed a complaint. PTI reported that an inmate of Nirmal Hriday gave birth to a baby boy on 1 May, following which Anima Indwar struck a deal with a UP-based couple on 14 May.
The UP-based family claimed that Anima Indwar, who handed over the child to them on 14 May, had called them up on 1 July and asked them to visit the shelter home for completing certain formalities. When the child was brought to the home, Indwar took the boy away.Rupa Verma to PTI
Not the First Instance of Its Kind
According to the police, this is a case of human trafficking and an FIR has been lodged under Section 370 of the IPC, Shyamanand Mandal, the officer-in-charge, told The Hindu.
The police told IANS that Missionaries of Charity has not been able to provide records of births by at least 280 of the 450 pregnant women at its various homes around Ranchi between 2015 and 2018.
A police official investigating the case told IANS: “We are investigating all angles... of the sale of children to childless couple. We have gone through records of the pregnant women and newborn babies. There are discrepancies in the records”.
As a precaution, the district unit of the Child Welfare Committee (CWC), on 6 July, shifted 22 children of Shishu Niketan, another shelter home in the vicinity, to a new accommodation, according to Hindustan Times. Thirteen unwed mothers living in Nirmal Hriday were also moved on the same day.
All 22 children staying at Nirmala Shishu Bhawan in Harmu locality were shifted to a safe place, which we cannot disclose currently in view of their safety. We have already shifted 13 unwed mothers from Nirmal Hriday to a Namkum-based shelter home on Wednesday (4 July). Since MC’s shelter is involved in selling newborn baby, the CWC has decided to write to the government for closure of both the shelters and blacklist Missionaries of Charity in Ranchi.Rupa Verma to Hindustan Times
“This was not an isolated case. Both the accused have admitted before the police that they have sold four children so far. We have videographic and written evidences of their statements,” Mandal told HT on Friday, 6 July.
In a statement to Reuters, Missionaries of Charity spokesperson Sunita Kumar said: “It is a horrible story....we are all shocked. It is against our moral conviction.”
This is not the first time that charity shelters in Ranchi have come into news for alleged child trafficking. According to The Telegraph, in 2014, the then Child Welfare panel chairperson Om Prakash Singh had written a letter to the state government alleging child trafficking at shelters at Jail Road and Hinoo. "My voice was suppressed... I was physically prevented by the head of Shishu Bhavan, which had a powerful lobby backing it, from conducting an inquiry," Singh told The Telegraph.
Govt to Freeze Funding of Missionaries of Charity
On Wednesday, 11 July, Jharkhand DGP wrote to home secretary to freeze the bank account of Missionaries of Charity, reported India Today. The action has been initiated after it was found that five organisatiosn under Missionaries of Charity were receiving foreign funding.
(With inputs from News18, NDTV, Reuters, The Hindi, Hindustan Times, The Telegraph and news agencies)
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