PATNA: Railway police personnel in Bihar are at their wit’s end ‘recovering’ young runaway children and sending them back home.
Officials say the East Central Railway (ECR) has recovered 2,821 children from different railway divisions of the zone in the last seven years but the numbers, far from subsiding, have been showing a spurt. Investigations reveal most kids run away over trivial matters.
In the past one year, 1,294 runaway children, including 151 minor girls were rescued from platforms as they loitered about or sat vacantly in areas patrolled by the Railway Protection Force (RPF).
On July 7, a boy aged 14 and a girl, 13, were recovered from Khagaria after they ran away following scolding by their parents over poor marks scored in examinations. On July 4, the RPF recovered five children from a train in Bagaha district and handed them over to their parents.
Admitting to the rise in the recovery of runaway children, RPF’s principal chief security commissioner of ECR headquarters at Hajipur, Ravindra Verma, said the cops are at their wit's end since caring for the children till their parents arrive is a tall task.
