Three days after Express exposed the moral rot in Chemmenchery, a slum resettlement colony in the city, the Tamil Nadu Slum Clearance Board (TNSCB) on Wednesday decided to set to a task force to address the issue. The decision was taken at a meeting of stakeholders convened the board’s managing director.
The task force, comprising NGOs who work in Chemmenchery as well as slum board and police officials, will hold its first meeting on August 10. It has an unenviable task as the moral fabric that has been torn apart has made the colony unsafe for pre-teens as well.
Take the case of Kala (5), a special child. Her labourer parents migrated from Andhra Pradesh to work in the construction sector near Old Mahabalipuram Road. Mobility restricted, Kala stays alone at home when both her parents go for work. Three months ago, when her parents returned from work, they found her crying and refusing to move. When the mother lifted Kala, she found she was bleeding from her genitals. They rushed her to the Rajiv Gandhi Government General Hospital, where she was admitted in the ICU. Three days later, she died in the ICU.
The man who allegedly raped Kala was a 35-year-old married neighbour. He was her dad’s friend; an uncle next door.
It was later found that he had been molesting Kala for quite some time before he had penetrative sex, which killed her.
Case status: rapist forced to leave; police file closed The family of Sabira (5) had moved into the colony in January this year.
One day, while her mother had gone out to buy kerosene, Sabira was playing in front of her house. Half an hour later, her mother came back to find the daughter missing. Sabira’s brother said he had last seen her playing with the uncle next door. When her mother screamed, a crying Sabira emerged from the neighbour’s house. “When I took her home she was crying badly. Her thighs had multiple scratches, so we took her to a hospital. Luckily she survived,” recalls Sabira’s mother.
Case status: Sabira’s mother filed a complaint, but not even an fir was registered
Three months ago, when Radika had to go to the market, she left her three-month-old baby Priya with next-door neighbour Kumar, a college student, for babysitting. When she returned 45 minutes later, the baby was crying. Later, from another neighbour, she learnt that Kumar had used the baby for oral sex. The neighbour claimed she had seen it happen from her window and recorded it on her mobile phone for evidence.
Case status: Radhika shared evidence with police, yet no FIR was filed. Kumar was let off with a fine.
“Chemmenchery is a zero-security zone for girl children and women,” says A Devaneyan, director of Thozhamai, an NGO working with the community for the past three years. “After they moved to Chemmenchery, almost 60 per cent of the mothers do housekeeping work in local firms. They leave home at 6.30 am return at 7.30 pm. Another 25 per cent work in the construction industry. Most of the time the girl child is left alone, exposed to dangers from preying men,” rues Devaneyan. In fact, families of such victims generally try and hush it up. Only one out of 10 cases gets reported in the police, he observes.
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