Stations of refugees

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The major railway stations of the state are fast turning into a shelter for the mentally challenged and abandoned, who arrive on trains from Bihar, Orissa and other northern states.

In fact, the railway police has handed over around 150 women and children and double the number of men so far this year to charitable institutions across the state after finding them roaming around in stations or travelling ticketless on long distance trains from destinations like Bhubhaneswar and Patna.

“On Monday alone, four women were found at the south railway station and sent to the Capurnam charitable trust. Such people are mostly found on long distance trains that end here like the Patna Express and the Ernakulam-Guwahati Express.

They travel in general compartments, often without food and in unhygienic conditions. Since TTE examination is not mandatory in the general class, it’s hard to spot them at the place of boarding, ” says a railway official.

A total of 46 women and 32 children were found by the railway police from the Ernakulam south railway station this year.

As the women are particularly vulnerable to attacks, they are quickly shifted to organisations like Shanti Bhavan. “Often they speak their local language and are completely out of their senses. Some murmur abuses while others laugh or even spit on you,” recounts one officer.
Most children found on the trains are usually runaways who don’t want to go home. Many are from Orissa and of all ages, some being as young as nine, and others 18.

“We produce them before the child welfare committee and then try to locate their guardians or child helpline centres nearest to their homes,” says Father Gilton, director of the Kochi centre of Childline India.

But as this is usually a long process, only four of the 20 children who have arrived so far this year on trains have been returned to their guardians, while the others have been sheltered at various rescue centres in Aluva and Kochi.

Even in August, the Childline was sent two children by the Railway Protection Force of the Ernakulam South. “One of the boys named Ganesh had escaped from the Juvenile Home in Coimbatore and fled again from the Ernakulam General hospital where he was being treated,” says a Childline official. Some children who are deaf and dumb, however, continue to remain in its care.

Many are fighting diseases

Many of the abandoned who arrive at railway stations across the state are elderly men and women, fighting chronic diseases, who have been forced to board the trains by relatives, say charitable institutions which take them in.

“Most of the people who the railways bring to us are elderly. It takes days or even months for them to open up and talk about the trauma they have suffered. When they do begin to share their experience they tell us they were forced to board trains with no destination in mind by relatives,” says Sister Juliet Joseph, director of Capurnam Charitable Trust, which has given shelter to around 300 women, mostly elderly, over the past nine years.

One of the women who came to the trust was Swapna, 45, of Bihar, who was forced to board the train by her cousins.

“She was found lying near the Pullepady overbridge two months ago, suffering from an infectious disease. We admitted her to the Chithra hospital where she is now under treatment. At first she was very reluctant to speak but our counsellors managed to get some information out of her after some effort,” says Sister Juliet.

What they learnt was heart-rending. The woman revealed she was put on the Patna-Ernakulam Express by her cousins as they wanted nothing to do with her on account of her chronic illness.