Railway Protection Force rescues 148 kids in 3 years

Amarjot Kaur

Chandigarh, January 30

In the past three years, the Railway Protection Force (RPF) has safely rescued 148 children. It has some of them with their parents and handed over others to the child line desk of the railway station, which is run by a city-based NGO, Youth Technical Training Society (YTTS).

‘Most of them runaway kids’

It is a standard protocol that the rescued children be handed over to the NGO if their parents are not present at the station. Most of them are ‘runaway kids’ from various parts of the country. Amarinderjit Singh, SHO, RPF

According to the RPF data, 39 children were rescued in 2021, of whom 22 were boys and 17 girls. It has been observed that the RPF handed a majority of the rescued children to the NGO in all these three years, except in 2019 when 13 girls were reunited with their parents and only 10 were sent to the NGO. This year, of the 22 rescued boys, 17 were handed to the NGO, while five were sent to their parents. Of the 17 girls who were rescued, only one was handed over to her parents, while the other 16 were sent to the NGO.

The SHO of the RPF, Chandigarh railway station, Amarinderjit Singh, said, “It is a standard protocol that the rescued children be handed over to the NGO if their parents are not present at the station. Most of these children are ‘runaway kids’ from various parts of the country. They are handed over to the NGO where they are cared for and even counselled.”

One of the volunteers at the child line desk of the station said, “When children come to the booth at the station, we counsel them. Then we register a DDR. A medical examination of the child is done. Nowadays, we also get them tested for Covid. Then we send them to Snehalaya, Sector 39. These days, we are dropping the boys at Aasha Kiran in Sector 46 and girls at Working Women Hostel, Sector 24. They stay there for 14 days, considering the Covid protocol. Then, the boys are sent to the CWC, Maloya, and the girls to Aashiana, Sector 15.” In 2020, even though the passenger rail services remained disrupted for most part of the year because of the pandemic-induced lockdown, the RPF rescued 29 children, of whom 24 were boys and five girls. The number of children rescued in 2019 is the highest in the past three years, where the RPF saved 80 children, of whom 57 were boys and 23 girls.