In a statement filed by the Deputy Superintendent of Police, children have been brought into Kerala, the state in India, in order to supplement a shortage of orphans and “destitute children” at the orphanage at Mukkam at Kozhikode. The shortage of children in the orphanage had been impacting the institutions financial status, as fewer children meant smaller government grants and other contributions.
According to the article, 588 children had been trafficked from Jharkhand, Bihar, and West Bengal to the state. Those children, meant to be brought to two orphanages in Kerala, were detained by police at a railway station in Palakkad early in June 2014 after it was found many did not have any proper documents. The Kerala State Child Rights Protection Commission has directed the Kerala government to take necessary steps to send these children back home. The children are now being kept at state-run juvenile homes of the Child Welfare Society in Palakkad, Malappuram and Thrissur.