Seventy-four children had to leave their Christian-run hostel in Rajasthan in early May, after the High Court dismissed a petition challenging the child welfare committee’s seizure of the central office of Emmanuel Mission India.
Emmanuel Mission International (EMI), founded in 1960 by Archbishop M.A. Thomas, is well-known for providing quality education to students from under-resourced backgrounds, regardless of caste or religion. EMI now runs five societies. One, Emmanuel Education Society, runs over 40 schools in Rajasthan state.
Dramatic scenes, captured on video, of parents and guardians trying to restrain police from shifting their children – against their will – to a bus, to take them away, were shared widely over social media.
An insider at EMI said that after a 2015 Welfare Act had been passed, the society had several times applied for registration, only to be rejected, so that they had ‘given up’. He said that they had sent away all the children from their orphanage to their guardians and/or relatives. In 2016, they formally notified authorities about the closure of the orphanage, and then leased out the building to Jeevan Asha Chhatrawas (‘Hope for Life’ hostel), an entirely separate body that was registered in 2012, to run a hostel in the same building. There is a lease agreement between the two entities.
‘The sole purpose of our building was to run a home for children. Since we could no longer use it, we leased [it] out to someone who could use it as a hostel,’ the source, who did not wish to be named, added.
