Chennai: Drive to rescue mentally ill destitute can violate human rights, say experts

CHENNAI: Greater Chennai Corporation will launch a five-day drive to rehabilitate homeless persons with mental illnesses across the city starting Thursday.
Officials, with help of non-government organisations, will rescue and move wandering destitute persons with mental illness to shelters, where they will be provided mental health interventions, vaccine against Covid-19, and will also be reintegrated with families.
A senior official from the corporation said they have identified about 400 people across the city, who will be moved to the corporation and NGO-run shelters, the Institute of Mental Health in Kilpauk, and the emergency care and recovery center at Tondiarpet.
Poorna Chandrika, director of IMH, called the drive a programme to raise awareness and humanely rehabilitate the wandering mentally ill. “The idea is not to fill beds but to reintegrate them with society,” she said.
Activists, however, have raised concerns of room for human rights violations. “What happens if an official finds a person with tattered clothes wandering on the streets? What if that person doesn’t have any mental illness but is homeless for other reasons? Will the officials drag them to the shelters as well? How do they plan to identify them?” asked Sudha Ramamoorthy, member of Disability Rights Alliance.
After a similar drive was conducted in Kanyakumari, the Madras high court in 2008 observed that not every person on the street is not mentally ill and that they should not be rounded up as if they were stray cattle.
“They must plan a more localised and dignified approach. They need to respect their consent,” Sudha said.