Mumbai: On May 7, a team of Nashik police rounded up about 150 persons on “suspicion” that they were beggars and were seeking alms on the streets. They were booked under the Bombay Prevention of Begging Act, 1959 and produced before a magistrate’s court. Among those arrested, 30 were women and 19 were minors. The rest were men. The youngest of them was a 13-day-old-boy, picked up along with his mother. They all belong to Nomadic and Denotified Nomadic Tribes (NT/DNT) and are mostly homeless; they worked as dailywagers selling balloons, flowers and fruits on the streets of Nashik city.In a matter of a few hours, the magistrate court “convicted” them and sent them to Chembur Beggars’ Home – men to Visapur in Ahmednagar and women along with their children to Chembur in Mumbai, a distance of 250 kilometres away. Cut off from their families and without any source of income, it took over two months of struggle and a petition to the Bombay high court to establish that those detained were not “beggars” but in fact the homeless poor struggling to make ends meet by selling stuff on the street and doing odd jobs. The high court on July 16 has ordered for the release of women and children for now, the decision to release men is yet to be taken.Koshish, a field action project of the Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS), which works with the homeless and also the petitioner on behalf of the women and children who were detained in Chembur home, has claimed in the petition that the magistrate had ordered for their one-year detention without following the due process. As per the law, only on investigation and ascertaining that the person was actually involved in the act of begging, can anyone be sent to the beggar home. This, too, is decided on the basis of the findings submitted by the probation officer, who goes through the preliminary facts of the case, interviews the detainees and writes a detailed report. The probation officer’s report was not called for and without giving those detained a fair chance to defend themselves they were sent to beggars’ home, the petition claimed.The petitioners, who have over past decade raised serious questions about the existence of the law and termed it as “unconstitutional”, have also sought directions from the court against the indiscriminate usage of the law against the poor. Justice P.D. Naik is yet to pass a detailed order in the petition.The anti-beggary Act which is prevalent in about 20 states and two union territories criminalises begging. Most states have replicated Maharashtra’s law and the legislature invariably targets the poorest and the most vulnerable homeless doing odd jobs for sustenance. The law gives the state a free hand to pick up anyone on mere suspicion and put them in detention homes.Mohammed Tarique, Koshish’s director and a long-time campaigner for repeal of the anti-beggary law says, “It is ironical that under this law, the state criminalises the poor for being poor. “People are on the street, struggling to make their ends meet only because they do not have any other alternative for survival. They live in abject poverty, without any state support. And instead of fulfilling its responsibility, the state picks up people and throws them in their beggar home which lacks even the most basic infrastructure.”In an article, Mohammed Tarique and Vijay Raghavan write:These legislations criminalise begging; people can be punished for begging, irrespective of their physical, economic, or psychological states of helplessness. While the focus is on the act of seeking alms, no attention is paid to the underlying factors behind it, thus perpetuating the state of destitution for the individuals concerned.Instead of addressing the deeper issues behind poverty, homelessness and destitution, most states have targeted the poor and criminalised them, says Tarique. This is more prevalent in cities than in rural areas. In his experience of working with the homeless in different cities of Maharashtra, most detentions have happened in Mumbai. These detentions are also the highest in south Mumbai, especially parts that house the elite, Tarique points out. The deputy commissioner of police in South Mumbai zone, also called as Zone-1, has a dedicated squad to catch hold of the poor on the street and send them to the beggars’ home.The Beggars’ Home in Chembur, Mumbai has two four-storeyed structures, one for men and another for women. The male barrack has over 200 inmates and women around 125. Tarique found out that most inmates are either disabled or have severe mental illness. “In the absence of enough caretakers (there are five in both homes), the inmates are only restricted to the ground and first floor. The living condition is poor and resources are limited. The condition here is a lot worse than what people have to put up with outside. At least there [outside] is a sense of freedom there,” Tarique argues.In the petition, Koshish described the Chembur Beggars’ Home as “depressing” and an inappropriate place without proper arrangements for sleeping and proper ventilation. “There is no bedding material, washrooms/toilets etc. The inmates have to sleep on the floor. The beggar homes do not have essential medicines or a doctor on the premises. There is male doctor, but the women being wary are not comfortable being examined by the male doctor,” the petition states. The petition further goes on to state that the environment is extremely unsafe for children with high risk of them catching infections and diseases.Lawyer Vijay Hiremath who appeared on the behalf of the petitioner said the recent detention of 150 people in Nashik was allegedly done as a part of “clean city” campaign. “The police claimed they wanted to help them in the process of getting their Aadhaar card made. They did not suspect and went with the police. And in no time, they were produced before the magistrate as beggars. They got no chance to defend themselves and within a day were convicted under the law,” Hiremath told The Wire. Even before their families could be informed, they were moved from Nashik to Pune’s “receiving centre” and then dispatched to Mumbai.Both Supreme Court and the Bombay high court on several occasions have directed the state government to set up shelter homes for the homeless. Recently, the Delhi high court had expressed concern over criminalising “persons who beg only out of ‘sheer necessity’ and not by choice”.“You or we will not beg even if we are offered a crore of rupees. It is out of sheer necessity that someone puts out a hand to beg for food. How is begging an offence in a country where you [government] are not able to provide food or jobs,” the Delhi high court has observed. The Bombay high court appointed S.D. Gokhale committee in 1990 had stated that the law is outdated and termed it unconstitutional. Later, ‘the Justice Dharmadhikari committee for prevention of atrocities against women’ had observed that most women who resorted to begging were also victims of violence and were in dire need of rehabilitation and support from the state.The guidelines by National Urban Livelihood Mission under the Ministry of Housing and Urban Poverty Alleviation, mandate construction of a permanent community shelter for every one lakh population by the government. By that calculation, Mumbai alone should have at least 124 community shelter homes for the homeless. However, according to Tarique, only 12 exist. “These too have been set up by NGOs and are inadequate,” he points out.The lawyers and activists, however feel hopeful with the recent high court’s order. “Along with their immediate release, we had sought the court’s intervention to prevent such detentions in the future. The court was empathetic towards the issue and is expected to pass a detailed order,” Hiremath said. While the women and children will be released from Chembur Beggars’ Home today and sent back to Nashik, the men will continue to be in the home at Visapur until an appeal is filed against their detention before the high court.
