Rohtak: The Rohtak kids who were fighting for their father's release are now separated from their grandparents. The child crusaders have been shifted to an orphanage.
After NDTV reported on the trauma of two young children who sat outside a Rohtak court seeking justice, the key accused in the gang-rape of their mother was arrested by the crime branch of Haryana Police.
The children, Nishita, 11, and Himanshu, 10, sat relentlessly for a month outside the Rohtak court campaigning for the release of their father, who was arrested on the charge of killing their mother. Their mother had been gang-raped in a moving car three years ago. When all efforts to bring the culprits to book proved in vain, they say, their parents consumed poison. Their mother died, the father survived and was arrested for murder.
The arrest of the rape-accused Jitender, comes after NDTV followed the story of the two children. They were removed by the police early on Thursday morning and taken to an undisclosed location.
"They have removed the children under the Juvenile Justice Care and Protection Act of 2000 in which they are saying that the kids were not safe on the street and so they were removed and there was no ill treatment of either the grandparents or the children," said PC Meena, DC, Rohtak.
He said the authorities had been having discussions with the grandparents for over a month about removing the kids from the road. The Red Cross Society has given the children Rs 2.5 lakh each for their education.
The case has caught the attention of human rights activists like Ranjan Lakhanpal, who says, "We demand that a CBI enquiry be ordered into the whole matter. The poor man who took the extreme step and tried to commit suicide should be freed, and the children should be taken care of and given proper shelter.''
The family said the police was pressurising them to withdraw the case because it had become an embarrassment. The children's grandfather, Roop Singh, is worried about their safety. He says: "The district collector said that either you should remove the children or we will have to take formal action".