Kerala High Court today directed the government to inform its stand on a petition seeking CBI probe into human trafficking of over 580 children from Jharkhand, Bihar and West Bengal brought for the state's orphanages.
The direction was issued by Justice K Ramakrishnan on a petition filed by NGO, All Kerala Anti-Corruption and Human Rights Protection Council of Palakkad.
The petitioner submitted that the present investigation was 'ineffective'. Only if an independent outside agency conducted investigation, truth can be brought out.
The case has been posted to June 30 for government's reply.
The children, who had been brought to two orphanages in the state, were detained by police at a railway station here after finding that many of them did not have any proper documents.
The issue had snowballed into a major row in the state with IUML, the key partner in UDF, objected to treating the incident as a case of child trafficking.
Taking a serious note of the incident, Kerala State Child Rights Protection Commission had directed the state government to take necessary steps to send back the children to their homes.
