Dewas: The Madhya Pradesh administration has cracked down on an ashram in Dewas, around 40 kilometers from Indore, after a deaf and mute woman living there was reported to be pregnant.
Seven women who were held hostage in the Kabir ashram were freed on Wednesday. The facility was being run under tents. Two persons, including a woman, linked to the ashram have been arrested.
A police officer probing the case said that a pregnant woman was left by two unknown women at district hospital. The woman was mentally challenged, deaf and mute, and gave birth to a baby. The WCD officers started efforts to reach out to her family to hand them over to them. However, the mentally weak woman could not offer much information about her whereabouts.
The WCD officers then sought help of professional counsellors and it turned out that the woman used to live at an ashram. On this the officers turned suspicious about the activities of the organisation and found out that more women also were kept there.
The hospital authorities informed the police who launched an investigation into the matter.
The administration team accompanied by the police force landed at the Kabir ashram on Wednesday and razed down the illegal portion of the site and freed seven women, including five with mental disabilities, from the facility.
It is suspected that these women were subjected to physical exploitation.
The police have lodged a case against unknown persons and sent all the freed women to one-stop centre in Dewas.
Located close to a limestone quarry, the ashram was being run there for years and had kept women and girls. Police, district administration and officers of Women and Child Development Department had carried out joint action on Wednesday.
In connection to the birth of baby from the deaf and mute girl, the police have lodged a rape case against unknown person and have taken DNA samples of six males, including that of the 60-year-old head living inside the ashram.
Superintendent of Police Dewas Shiv Dayal said that medical examinations carried out on the six women freed from the ashram have found nothing incriminating.
The deaf and mute woman, the ashram inhabitants said, was left there at the age of six by her parents. A probe is on into the functioning of the ashram.
Home minister Dr Narottam Mishra on Wednesday had said that proper action will be taken against the facility.
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