Seventy-year-old Lily Berito, who runs two Child Care Institutes (CCIs) in Gurugram through Ujjwal Niketan Charitable Trust, was arrested from New Delhi on Sunday.
Various charges
Ms. Berito faces charges of illegal adoption, cruelty towards children and manipulation of documents following raids by an observation team led by Chief Judicial Magistrate Suruchi Atreja Singh two months ago.
Sector 10 A police station Station House Officer Inspector Sandeep Kumar said Ms. Berito, who was on the run since July, was arrested from Sukhdev Vihar in Delhi and remanded to judicial custody after she was produced before a court here.
The arrest came four days after Haryana State Commission for Protection of Child Rights (HSCPCR) member B.K. Goel took a serious view of the delay in police action in the case and directed the SIT to arrest the woman within 10 days.
Under the scanner
One of the institutes run by the trust at Sector 4 here had come under the scanner of the Child Welfare Committee (CWC) in Gurugram after a team had carried out an inspection at its premises in November last and found that two minor girls had been given for adoption illegally.
A three-member observation committee headed Ms. Singh carried out surprise inspections again at Sector 4 and the Hayatpur CCIs of the trust in July and found several discrepancies. While the Sector 4 home was booked for violations under the Juvenile Justice Act, records of the Hayatpur home were found manipulated. There were discrepancies in documents showing the age and parentage of the children. Some children were sent to Goa without requisite permission from the CWC. Also, the children were given for adoption in violation of laws. A teenage girl who shifted out of the Hayatpur home later alleged sexual assault by the CCI’s driver, who has been arrested.
Human trafficking racket
CWC chairperson Shakuntala Dhull, who was first to expose the wrongdoings of the trust, demanded that the police carry out detailed investigation into the matter as it could involve a huge human trafficking racket.