dna impact: Kolhapur trafficking reaches state child rights panel

dna report on minor kids from Kolhapur illegally taken across the state border and kept with a foreigner in Goa under 'suspicious' circumstances, is now the subject of a petition to the Maharashtra Protection of Child Rights Commission (MPCRC) by Pune-based activist Anjali Pawar of Sakhee – an activist organisation working for child rights.

"Authorities are characteristically apathetic to the plight of the children. This only emboldens others. I hope that the government and the police take cognisance of the dna report and work in tandem to take this case to its logical conclusion," she told dna. "Reuniting the boys with their parents or their transfer to a home in Kolhapur, which will take care of them properly, is what needs to be done. But ensuring swift and strong action is also important; that alone will send a strong signal and deter such offenders," she said. All eyes will now be on the way this quasi-judicial body reacts to the complaint.

Meanwhile, a team from Kolhapur police is in Goa while another Goa police team has arrived in Kolhapur so that both sides can make a watertight case. Kolhapur police have begun questioning Emmanuel Gaikwad who 'trafficked' the children to Goa in July 2011. "We're waiting to hear from the Panjim Child Welfare Committee. They have to confirm whether the children were abused or were potential targets of abuse because they have interacted with the children."

Kolhapur district Child Welfare Committee (CWC) chairperson Priya Chorage told dna, "I have written to the Goa CWC and the Goa Women and Child Welfare department. Once the children are back in their home town, meet parents and have people speaking to them in their mother-tongue (Marathi) around them, they could be more comfortable to reveal what happened in the nine months they were with the UK national Timothy Geddes."

While Geddes, whose passport has been impounded, is still a free man, Goa police have found that the house in Bambolim where he had kept the boys from Kolhapur is located in an area he was already familiar with. The UK national first stayed with one Bethesda Life Centre, run by Martin Phillip and his wife Beena, which has over 130 children between the age group of 1-18 in three different houses. Like the Kolhapur's OFH, here too orphans, children of HIV/AIDS-affected parents, children of commercial sex workers and children of parents with leprosy and other incurable diseases are kept. The home's address – House No 150/3, Rego Bagh, Alto Santa Cruz, Bambolim Complex, Bambolim, Goa – is shared with unlisted private company Eternalbeauty Products Pvt Ltd run by the same couple and is located not even a stone's throw away from the palatial home where the Kolhapur boys were housed.

"We don't want to simply arrest or detain him and have the courts let him go because that will weaken the case. We are trying to retrace his background so that we can find out his antecedents and of his potentially being involved in such cases elsewhere too," said a senior Goa police official.

Meanwhile dna has found that Emmanuel Gaikwad had connections with one Gareth Franks of the Nashik Reformed Church who had introduced Geddes to him. Attempts are on to reach Franks and find out more details.