Over a week after three minor girls died allegedly of starvation in east Delhi’s Mandawali, the Delhi Rozi Roti Adhikar Abhiyan’s fact-finding report released on Tuesday said the two younger girls were not enrolled in any anganwadi.
“There was no functional anganwadi at the place where the family lived for several years. As a result, the two younger siblings [Shikha, 4, and Parul, 2] were not enrolled in any anganwadi and were not receiving the daily food rations that they were entitled to under the Integrated Child Development Scheme which operates within the framework of the NFSA [National Food Security Act],” the report stated.
Team members who came up with the report claim to have visited the area on July 28 and spoke to several people including the family’s current neighbours and former ones.
The report stated that the team also visited an anganwadi which was 30-40 steps away from the room where the girls died and had shifted to barely four days before their death.
During the visit, the team allegedly did not find the teacher or helper but locals said it was functional and nearly 25 children were visiting the anganwadi.
However, the two younger siblings were not enrolled in the anganwadi, the report said.
‘Govt failure’
While the anganwadi workers urged children to enrol, “They [locals] conjectured that since the family was new to the area and arrived only over the weekend, they had not yet been identified”.
The report also mentioned the bigger problems faced by those who are “needy” and how the State and the Central government failed in the implementation of policies which affects them.
The report said that the State government did not carry out periodic social audits due to which complaints of people regarding ration cards and non-functional anganwadis remain unaddressed.
The report also claimed that in the last four and a half years, the Central government has not increased allocation under the NFSA “either by the way of enhancing entitlement or increasing the coverage”.
On father’s role
Stating verbal testimonies of the people who knew the family, the report said that they [people] do not believe that the girls’ father Mangal Singh who has been missing could have given a medicine to them leading to their death. He loved the kids dearly and had distributed sweets at their birth, locals were quoted as saying.
On July 24, Mansi (8), Shikha and Parul were declared dead at Lal Bahadur Shastri Hospital, where they were taken by their mother Bina and family friend Narayan.
While the two autopsies conducted after the incident stated that the girls prima facie died of starvation, the viscera report is awaited.
The Sub-Divisional Magistrate report, however, raised “doubt” into the death and said that the father had allegedly given some medicine to the girl on July 23.