Women back from US, Britain among beggars in Hyderabad

Women rounded up on city’s streets narrate tales of woe in fluent English

The ongoing clampdown on begging by authorities in Hyderabad, ahead of the visit by Ivanka Trump, daughter of US President Donald Trump, has brought to fore some startling and heart-rending stories of hard luck and cheating by near and dear ones.

Officials of Anand Ashram, at Charalapally Central Jail, said they were shocked to find two English-speaking middle aged women, one of them a US green card holder and another a former accounts officer in London.

They were rounded up for begging at public places after police imposed a ban on begging in the city last month. When officials at the shelter, attached to the Charalapally jail, questioned them about the reasons for begging on the streets, the women narrated their tales of woe in fluent English.

Farzana, 50, an MBA holder, told officials she worked as an accounts officer in London but fell on hard times after her husband died.

“For the past two years she was facing difficulties and was staying with her son in Hyderabad’, said K. Arjun Rao, in charge of the Ashram and superintendent of the jail.

“She said she started begging on the advice of a [guru] as a remedy for ending her misery. She was taken in to custody from Langar House area in Hyderabad and brought to Ashram.”

She was allowed to go home after her son submitted an affidavit assuring that she would not indulge in begging in future.

Meanwhile 44-year-old Rabia Baseera, the green card holder, said she was forced to beg after relatives cheated her out of her hard-earned properties in the city.

“She was well settled and worked in the US for many years. She had many properties in the city but now the same woman was forced to beg outside a Dargah (shrine) as her relatives had deceitfully taken away all her properties,” Arjun Rao said.

Baseera was also allowed to go back home on the intervention of some well-wishers. Authorities have so far rounded up 133 women beggars from different places and set free 121 of them.