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Four Madrassa teachers, who were arrested by the Government Railway Police (GRP) and Railway Protection Force (RPF) in Bhusawal and Manmad on May 30, on the suspicion that they were illegally trafficking 59 kids from Bihar to Maharashtra for child labour, were released on bail as police probe revealed that the kids were not being trafficked but instead were being sent to madrassas in Sangli and Pune with the consent of their parents.
The bail order was passed by the additional district and sessions court in Malegaon on June 23. After compliance with all the bail terms, the four maulanas came out of the Nashik central prison on Tuesday afternoon, 27 days after being arrested.
Saddam Hussain Siddiqui (23), one of the four teachers who was arrested, told the Indian Express, “Just because we did not have enough documents, the police made out a strict case against us without even duly doing a basic background check. Action should be taken against those people who provided false information about us.”
Another teacher, Noman Alam Siddiqui (28), said, “Most of the kids were our relatives and are from the same village. We have been taking kids from Bihar to Maharashtra since 2018, but we never faced such problems in the past. We teach kids, educate them, and make them good human beings, and in return what do we get? We are slapped with charges of trafficking the kids. Gross injustice has been done to us. We should be relieved from the case immediately as we have done no wrong.”
Advocate Niyaz Lodhi, representing the accused, said, “We informed the court that merely on suspicion and presumption, one cannot be kept behind bars. The investigators visited Bihar, met the parents of the children, and verified the fact that the kids were being sent with their consent. After considering all the material submitted, the court granted bail to the four maulanas.”
“We are going to challenge the FIR in the Bombay High Court and get it quashed,” said Lodhi.
Acting on a tip-off that a group of children were allegedly being trafficked for child labour, officials of the RPF searched the 01040 Up Danapur-Pune Express train at Bhusawal on May 30, where they found 29 children in coaches S-10 and S-11.
The children were handed over to GRP. Mohammed Anjur Alam Mohammed Syed Ali (34), a resident of Sangli, who was accompanying the children, was arrested.
The same train was again searched when it reached Manmad station (Nashik), where the RPF ‘rescued’ 30 children who were travelling with four men–Saddam Hussain Siddiqui, Noman Alam Siddiqui, Ezaj Ziyabbul Siddiqui (40) and Mohammed Shahnawaz Haroon (22)—all from Bihar’s Araria district.
Fifty-nine children, mostly from Bihar’s Araria district, were put in shelter homes in Bhusawal and Nashik after the RPF received information that they were being trafficked. The child welfare committee sent the rescued children back to their home state (Bihar) on June 13 and 16.
Mohammed Anjur Alam Mohammed Syed Ali, arrested by the Bhusawal GRP, is still in judicial custody and awaiting bail.
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