Children Forced Into Sex With Strangers, One Found HIV+; Rohtak Shelter Boss Held

Chandigarh: Children, many between five and 10 years, were forced into oral sex and performing yoga in the nude at the Rohtak shelter home raided by a National Commission for Protection of Child Rights (NCPCR) team in early May. An inmate was found to be HIV positive.

Such revelations are part of a report submitted on Wednesday by two members — advocate Anil Malhotra and Sudeepti Sharma — of a probe panel set up by the Punjab and Haryana high court after the raid at Apna Ghar, run by an NGO. Jaswanti Devi, who ran the home, was arrested.

About 101 inmates of the home were sent to various homes in Haryana after the arrest of Jaswanti and her accomplices.

The report, a copy of which is with TOI, said most of the girls were made to garland men, saying they were "married," and forced to consent to physical relationship.

The panel also found that a woman shifted from Apna Ghar to another shelter home in an adjoining district had tested HIV positive.

“Some children between five and 10 years complained of sexual abuse, including oral sex, by Jaswanti’s sonin-law Jai Bhagwan and driver Satish," said the report.

Satish filmed inmates as they performed yoga naked", it said. Jaswanti had even sold a speech-and-hearing-impaired girl thrice and another girl was reportedly found pregnant.

During their interaction, the probe panel members found inmates withblank/ frozen expression, presumably due to addiction to a white powder, which was administered in a soft drink in the shelter home before forcing them for sexual encounters with outsiders".

According to the report, inmates were terrified and opened up after much persuasion. Most girls said Satish would drive them to hotels where policemen abused them sexually. This was repulsive, painful and agonizing, the report quoted the inmates as saying.

“Newborn boys were sold to people in the garb of adoption by Jaswanti. If it were a girl, she would be reared to ‘serve’ males visiting the home," the report said.

The panel asked the court to transfer the case from the Haryana Police and hand it over to an independent agency like the CBI for a thorough probe, prosecution and trial of the accused.

The panel suggested brain mapping and lie detector tests for all the seven accused and examination of all electronic equipment like laptops, computers, mobile phones, cameras and recording devices belonging to them to check allegations of child pornography.