The ongoing drive against beggar by the authorities in Hyderabad ahead of the visit of Ivanka Trump, the daughter of US President Donald Trump, has brought some startling and heart-rending stories of hard luck and cheating by the near and dear ones.
Officials of Anand Ashram at Charalapally Central Jail were shocked to find two English-speaking middle aged women, one of them US green card holder and another former account officer in London. They were rounded up for begging at public places after police imposed ban on begging in the city last month.
When the officials at the shelter home attached to the Charalapally jail questioned them about the reasons for begging on the streets, the ladies narrated their tales of woes in fluent English.
50 year Farzana, an MBA degree holder, told the officials that she worked as an accounts officer in London but fell on hard times after her husband passed away. “For the past two years she was facing difficulties and was staying with her son in Hyderabad’, said K Arjun Rao, the in charge of Ashram and the superintendent of the jail.
“She revealed that she started begging on the advise of a godman as a remedy for ending her miseries. She was taken into custody from Langar House area in Hyderabad and brought to ashram”.
She was allowed to go home after his son submitted an affidavit assuring that she will not indulge in begging in future.
The story of 44-year-old Rabia Baseera was more touching as the green card holder from the USA was forced to beg after her relatives cheated her out of her hard earned properties in the city. “She was well settled and worked in USA for many years. She had many properties in the city but now the same lady was forced to beg outside a Dargah (shrine) as her relatives had deceitfully taken away all her properties”, Arjun Rao said.
Baseera was also allowed to go back home on the intervention of some of her wellwishers.
Authorities who have so far rounded up 133 female beggars from different places and set free 121 of them on assurance of their families found that most of the elderly beggars were forced to be on the streets as they were driven out of homes by their families. In case of others like 50 year old Sattavva the fate was cruel.
She lost two sons and two daughters one after the other. Her sons in law left their children in her custody and she was begging to take care of them. “I don’t know what my grand children are doing and who is taking care of them. I am lying here for the last two days waiting for my brother to come and get me out. My grand children don’t know my whereabouts”, she said.