Chennai NGO reunites destitute women with families

AHMEDABAD: After almost two years of being ''lost'', Samjuben, a mentally disturbed woman, returned home to her village in Sanand taluka on Friday. Her seven year old son instantly recognised her and clung to her when she was brought home.
The joyful re-union was possible due to the joint networking initiated by a Chennai based NGO ''The Banyan'' which works to help rehabilitate destitute women.The Banyan volunteers networked with the Chennai Police and the Gujarat Police with help from city based NGO Vatavruksh to help similar reunions of three other destitute women.
"In her unstable mental state Samjuben, who was a victim of spouse abuse, was returning to her in-laws village at Sarigam after a visit to her mother''s house. Due to a freak accident she lost her way and boarded a train that took her to Chennai," says Banyan volunteer Poornima Benjamin.
There were three other similarly destitute women, all mentally disturbed, who were rehabilitated by Banyan. Benjamin was in city here on Saturday after she took all the four women back to their relatives home in different parts of the state.
"Our volunteers had picked up Samjuben at the Chennai railway station almost two years ago. We had a total of four women aged between 28 to 50 years with us in Chennai who hailed from Gujarat. We decided to rehabilitate them as we generally do when we can find out their homes", she says.
The same was the case of Namita, a 40 year old woman from Mota Malpur, a village near Ankleshwar. After counselling and medical treatment she told volunteers that she had walked about a 100 km from her village to Surat and boarded the train which may have brought her to Chennai.
Banyan then established contact with her sons in the village who were willing to take care of her but said that their financial condition was so poor that they could not go all the way to Chennai to bring her back. "We contacted Ahmedabad based NGO Vatavruksh to verify the addresses that the women gave us and to find out if there are relatives who want the missing person to return" she says.
A volunteer at Vatavkrush then contacted the additional commissioner of police Keshav Kumar. He helped Banyan to get in touch with the police in the interior villages of Ankleshwar, Sanand taluka, Kapadvanj and Surat. They in turn contacted their families.
"In one case we needed direct interference of the local police when the step brothers of a 50 year old woman from Kapadvanj refused to take her back. We had to create social pressure and also include the maulvi to convince them to help rehabilitate her," he says.
According to Benjamin rehabilitation alone is not the goal. "We also send lifetime medication for these women. We have a follow-up programme to ensure that the rehabilitation plan works. The women who we rehabilitated in Gujarat would be monitored periodically. We have therefore planned to network with local NGOs and the police for the purpose", she said.
Banyan has the telephone number of the sarpanchs of the villages and the residential address to keep a check to ensure that all is well with the rehabilitated women.
(Names of the women have been changed to protect identities)