Bombay HC: Release women, kids detained at Beggars' Home

MUMBAI: The Bombay high court on Monday ordered immediate release of 30 women and around 20 children illegally detained at Chembur Beggars' Home. A magistrate in Nashik had sentenced the lot to a year in the home after they were arrested during a drive in May. The Chembur home is the only institution for women beggars in the state.
Koshish, a field action project of the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, and 29 detained women, approached the HC against the "wrong and illegal order of May 7, 2018 passed by chief judicial magistrate, Nashik, under section 5 of the Bombay Prevention of Begging Act, 1960."
The police action and the court order had led to illegal detention of young and old women, their children, one just a two-week-old infant, submitted Mihir Desai and Vijay Hiremath, counsel for Koshish, before justice P D Naik.The women were first taken to Pune to a 'receiving centre' in Yerawada and brought to the Chembur home on May 10.
The women included one barely 19 years old, others in their early 20s and five in their 70s. They are not beggars, said the petition. They were working as daily wagers and hawkers and doing odd jobs, including selling items such as garlands and balloons, and several were domestic helps. The 19-year-old earned a living 'peeling pomegranates'. Some were allegedly arrested on the pretext that their Aadhar cards would be made, but with no legal representation, they were sentenced to a year's detention, the court was told.
The high court, for reasons to be made available later, accepted the plea and directed their release.
Some lived in shanties in Nashik, others had a proper address, while some lived on the streets, but didn't qualify as beggars, said Koshish which was started in 2006 with the aim of working to repeal the 'Draconian beggary prevention law'.
The law, said Koshish, fails to recognize the circumstances that force people to destitution and criminalizes poverty without acknowledging exclusion faced by entire sections or communities in society.