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Prisoners belong to a ghettoised world. Label them under the common heading called ‘criminals.’ What about their children? What happens to these kids while their parents, often both, are behind bars? No one conceives of prison inmates as people with a family with wives/husbands, in-laws and children. So, one does not question what happens to the children of people serving a jail sentence. Flickering Angels is a documentary that sheds light, perhaps for the first time, on the children of prison inmates in West Bengal.
Produced by Gaurang Films and directed by Subhrajit Mitra, the film is an exception to society’s state of indifference towards these young children marginalised for no fault of their own. Flickering Angels is the most ideal title one could have created for a group of girls ranging between the ages of six and 16. They are lights that are not fully switched on by life nor are they immersed in complete darkness. Their parents are either undertrials or inmates in prisons across West Bengal. They look with vacant expressions without a smile until they warm up to some people from the mainstream, who are trying to bring new meaning into their lives. One of them is B. D. Sharma, IPS, Addl. DG (East), BSF, Government of India. This gentleman has taken the lead in setting up Dayabari for girl-children of convicts and undertrials held captive in different prisons across West Bengal. Dayabari is a care home based in Ranaghat along the India-Bangladesh border. He talks about Afroza, a girl from Bangladesh who was in prison with her mother caught while crossing the border illegally. But the girl, who hardly smiles or talks, was in crisis when her mother died during her prison term and the girl was set free to go back to Bangladesh. She has no home to go back to and would have been lost completely if she did not get shelter in Dayabari under the tender care of Sister Marietta, Superintendent, Dayabari. Others who have enriched the narrative of the film are Justice Asok Kr. Ganguly, Chairperson, West Bengal Human Rights Commission, Ranvir Kumar, IPS, IG, Correctional Services, Government of West Bengal, and Dr. Sabyasachi Mitra, Consultant Neuropsychiatrist. The film follows the past journeys of some of these girls who go through elementary education in Dayabari alongside training in some technical skills to equip them for financial independence later. This protects them from being trafficked as the state of West Bengal is bordered on three sides that offer easy routes to trafficking. Ganguly stresses on these children, who are practically persona non grata and have no locus standii in society. "Worse is that they carry the social stigma of their parents’ imprisonment even when the parent has been wrongfully imprisoned for a simple crime like trying to cross the border without legal papers," informs Sharma. "These girls are doubly handicapped by poverty and the fact that they are identified with parents who are prison inmates who, it is assumed, are criminals. Even worse is the position of girls who belong to Bangladesh and must be extradited on legal grounds even when they have no home to go back to. They long to belong to the mainstream and it is our duty, as open-minded citizens, to accept them into the mainstream. This will go a long way in establishing a secure future for them and by them," sums up Dr Mitra.
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