A Jharkhand police team from Chaibasa in West Singhbhum district arrested Satyendra Prakash Musa on Tuesday, August 28. The 58-year-old accused was running an illegal children's home at Phullanwal in Ludhiana district, Punjab.
Musa claimed that parents had left their children at the Paksin Mary Cross Child Shelter Home because they were poor and could not afford to educate them. Musa added that he had been running the home for the past 12 years.
The child shelter home was operating without registration required under the Juvenile Justice Act. The accused has been charged with illegal religious conversions and human trafficking and was booked under Section 4 of Jharkhand Religious Freedom Act 2017, Section 42 of the Juvenile Justice Act, Section 5 of the Immoral Traffic Prevention Act and Section 370 (Trafficking of Persons) of Indian Penal Code, reports Indian Express.
The Jharkhand police team, which had been camping in Ludhiana since last week, said that Musa converted children to Christianity and gave them Christian-sounding names.
When the raid was conducted, out of the 38 children living in the home, only eight — four each from Jharkhand and Bihar — were present there. The police said that around 30 children allegedly trafficked from Jharkhand are yet to be found. However, Musa claimed that he sent more than 30 missing kids to their parents but police haven't verified his claims.
Officials from Ludhiana district administration, on a complaint received from Child Welfare Committee in Chaibasa, raided the home on August 20 and sealed it, shifting eight rescued kids to a children's home in Doraha.
"Musa claims that he returned 30 kids to their parents but he has failed to give proof. All the 30 missing children are from Jharkhand. The children at the home were converted to Christianity without informing their parents and given new names. We are taking him to Chaibasa to verify to whom he handed over the kids," a Jharkhand policeman told Indian Express.
Meanwhile, the police have launched a manhunt for Junal Longa, another accused in the case and a resident of Seengda village in Chaibasa.
