Court orders release of 25-yr-old woman detained in shelter home

MUMBAI: The sessions court has recently allowed the release of a 25-year-old woman from a Chembur shelter home after she was rescued from a brothel in July, setting aside a previous magistrate order of keeping her in custody for three months.

Additional sessions judge CP Gaddam, quashing the magistrate court’s order, has ordered to hand over the woman’s custody to her father.

The woman, a mother of two, had come to Mumbai from West Bengal in January this year, after her husband had died. Soon after arriving in the city, the woman started working for a family in Juhu as a house help. The probationary officer of the shelter home stated that in July, the woman had got work at a dance bar in the same area through a recent acquaintance. On July 12, she was pushed into prostitution.

Two days later, in a raid at a bungalow in Juhu, the police rescued her along with seven other women. The police had also arrested six persons for running the brothel under the Immoral Traffic (Prevention) Act.

A Sewri metropolitan magistrate then ordered to send the rescued women to a Chembur shelter home. Later, the court released six of the eight women, handing their custody to their parents and husbands.

“A woman, who identified herself as the 25-year-old’s cousin, was present during the hearing at the Sewri metropolitan magistrate to seek her custody,” VV Jaiswal, the 25-year-old’s advocate, told the sessions court.

Jaiswal said that the magistrate court, however, did not grant the sanction and instead observed that the rescued woman “is mature enough to consider that whatever she did is not fair and respectful to her.”

The magistrate had then ordered to send the woman to a shelter home for three months for rehabilitation, then to a shelter home in Kolkata and then be reintegrated with her family.

Jaiswal said, “The detention cannot be more than 21 days and therefore, the magistrate’s order would not sustain in law. Her two children – a son and a daughter – have been suffering unnecessarily.” The magistrate then ordered to hand over the woman’s custody to her father.