Girls escape from Doon shelter home, security under scanner
NEGLIGENCE The girls fled even as nobody is allowed to leave without DM’S consent
DEHRADUN: Barely a month after staff of a children’s home in Dehradun was booked for alleged negligence, the government-run shelter homes have once again come under scanner after five girls managed to escape from such a facility in Kedarpuram on Saturday night.
Though the girls were rescued a few hours later, the question is - how did they manage to escape from the facility that claims to have a tight security?
The incident puts yet another question mark on the state-run shelter homes which have had several brushes with controversies in the past.
According to police, five girls - aged between 10 to 15 years managed to escape from Balika Niketan children’s home, apparently with full planning as they’d taken along their warm clothes and blankets with them.
Ironically, no one is allowed to leave or visit the shelter home without the district magistrate’s permission, so how could the girls leave without the security staff that includes three home guards being alarmed?
As they ventured into a nearby colony, locals surrounded them after mistaking them for thieves, but were shocked to know the truth.
“We got a call from the locals informing us that they had held the girls who ran away from the shelter home. We also got a call from the shelter home (reporting the incident to the police),” Rajesh Sah, in-charge of Nehru Colony police station (under whose jurisdiction the shelter home falls), told HT. “We immediately rushed to the spot and later handed over the girls to the shelter home,” said Sah, adding that police would begin interrogation into the case on Monday.
The children’s home in Dehradun comprises two wings Shishu Sadan (for children from 0-10 years of age) and Balika Niketan (for girls from 11-18 years of age), which are running on the same campus as that of the Nari Niketan (women’s shelter home) -- all of which have hit headlines for the wrong reasons over the past years.
Last month, police booked seven caretakers and a former pharmacist of the Shishu Sadan on charges of negligence in duty which allegedly led to death of two kids in 2016 and disability of another in 2014.
They were booked based on a departmental probe report by the social welfare department. NEW DELHI: When Prince Kapoor received his much-awaited degree certificate from the Delhi University on Saturday, he was in for a surprise. While the university had named him correctly in English, in Hindi he had been anointed Rajkumar Kapoor.
“I got my certificate, and when I looked at it, I was surprised to see my name. They seem to have translated my name from English to Hindi. So ‘Prince’ became ‘Rajkumar’,” said the 25 year old who had graduated from a Bcom programme at the School of Open Learning in 2015.
The degree certificate was a major milestone for Prince, who had enrolled in the course in 2010 and had taken five years to complete it.
“I don’t understand how it could have happened. You don’t translate names. I don’t know what to do now,” said Harvinder Kapoor, Prince’s father.
CS Dubey, director of the distance learning institution, however, did not seem surprised by the incident. “This happens sometimes. It happens in regular colleges too. When you have to issue as many as 4lakh certificates, one or two errors are possible. And the names are written by hand, and it is first written in English and then in Hindi, so it must be just a human error. They can just apply for a correction and they will be issued a corrected certificate,” said Dubey.
PEDIGREE AND TEMPERAMENT
The squad comprises German Shepherds, Labradors, Retrievers, Doberman and Cocker Spaniels. Two German Shepherds are deployed at Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama’s high-security residence at Mcleodganj in Dharamshala. “It takes six months to a year to train a dog. These breeds are preferred because of their tracking ability, short coat and adaptibility. Only pedigree dogs registered with the Kennel Club of India with a suitable temperament are selected,” says the dog trainer, requesting anonymity. He says the dogs will get to stay in spacious, modern kennels at Junga.
The squad is headed by an inspector rank officer, while each dog is handled by a personnel of the rank of head constable or constable.
TRACK RECORD
German Shepherd Hero, who was imported from Ireland for 250 pounds, was the first member of the state’s dog squad in 1957. It was due to the efforts of the then lieutenant governor of Himachal Pradesh (1955-63), Raja Bajrang Bahadur Singh Bhadri, that a dozen canines were recruited in the squad.
Interestingly, it’s been a tradition to name members in the squad after film characters. So the German Shepherd trained in sniffing out narcotics is Rambo, while another twoyear-old Alsatian known for his tracking skills is Singham.
It was Singham who tracked down the body of missing youth Kedar Singh in Solan district last year. Kedar was missing for more than a week.
Another dog, Max, is credited with recovering 2.8 kg of charas in Kullu and has Krish, another sniffer, for company. They are all two to three years old.