Muslim students en route to madrasas from Bihar detained in MP, parents allege communal profiling

The detention of about 155 minor Muslim students, along with their teachers, by the Government Railway Police (GRP) in Madhya Pradesh while they were on their way to schools and madrasas in Maharashtra and Karnataka sparked allegations of communal profiling by the parents, who alleged that the detention in shelter homes for over two weeks, which traumatised the children, was carried out after their religious identity had been ascertained.

The children, aged between six and 15 years and hailing from Bihar’s Seemanchal region, had been intercepted by the GRP at Katni on April 11 after authorities claimed to have received intelligence inputs suggesting that the minors were allegedly being trafficked for child labour in Maharashtra’s Latur district, following which an FIR was registered on April 12 under Section 143(4) of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita pertaining to trafficking of minors, according to The Indian Express.

After the interception, the children and accompanying teachers were moved to shelter homes in Katni and Jabalpur, where they remained for almost a fortnight before being returned to Bihar on April 25, even as parents accused the administration of subjecting them to an unnecessarily protracted verification process under the guise of Social Investigation Reports.

Addressing a press conference in Bihar’s Araria district on Monday, several parents demanded compensation for the children and teachers, an impartial inquiry into the conduct of the authorities, and the formulation of a standard operating procedure to prevent the harassment of children travelling for educational purposes.

One of the parents said that her grandchildren had long been studying in Bidar in Karnataka owing to the comparatively superior educational standards available there, while other alleged that the children had been deliberately singled out because of their religious identity.

Representatives of Imarat-e-Shariah, a socio-educational organisation, asserted that travelling for religious instruction constituted a lawful and historically entrenched practice, whereas legal representatives Mohammed Rameez and Mohammed Nawaz stated that the FIR lodged by the Katni GRP had already been challenged.

Railway and child protection authorities, however, defended the intervention, insisting that the operation had been initiated solely on the basis of credible alerts regarding possible child trafficking and suspicious movement of minors travelling without adequate documentation.