Agartala : Sixteen of the 19 children rescued from the Guwahati railway station by the Assam Police CID and Childline, an NGO, belong to tribal refugees living in Tripura and will be handed over to their parents, an official said here on Thursday.
“All the 19 children, rescued by the Assam Police CID and Childline from the Guwahati railway station on February 25, are now staying at a children’s home run by the Assam government in Guwahati,” Tripura social welfare department secretary M. Nagaraju told reporters.
He said: “A team of officials from north Tripura’s child welfare committee would go to Guwahati and the children would be brought back to Tripura by March 10.”
Of the 19 children, all below 18 years of age, 16 belong to the Reang refugees of Mizoram who are currently living in seven camps in North Tripura and remaining three are inhabitants of Hilakhandhi of southern Assam.
Childline officials in Guwahati suspect it was a case of child trafficking. The Assam police are still investigating the motive of the two adults accompanying the children.
An official of Tripura social welfare department on condition of anonymity said that the children were being trafficked to Haryana/Uttar Pradesh to be forced into child labour.
“The children accompanied by two adults would have boarded a Delhi-bound train, had the Assam CID and Childline functionaries not reached the Guwahati railway station in time,” the official said.
Around 31,300 Reang tribals have been living in seven camps in north Tripura adjoining Mizoram since October 1997 when they fled western Mizoram after the killing of a Mizo forest officer triggered ethnic troubles.