C'garh: Cops arrange trip for students from remote hamlets

Over 300 children from remote hamlets in Chhattisgarh's naxal-affected Bijapur district were taken on a sightseeing tour of the state's Bastar region as part of a police initiative, a senior official said today.

The official said that many of the 305 children who were part of the tour under the community policing programme called "Manva Puna Bijapur" (our changing Bijapur) had never stepped out of their villages before this.

Bijapur Superintendent of Police Mohit Garg told PTI that the sightseeing tour, held on August 11-12, was to make children from remote hamlets aware of the changes happening around them so that they, in turn, could become agents of change in their own vicinities.

"They had never seen trains, big hospitals, roads, mobile phone towers, power supply lines and the like before this," Garg said.

Garg said that the students were chosen from 14 schools of Gangaloor, Basaguda, Mirtoor, Farsegadh, Bedre and Tarlaguda areas of Bijapur with the district police department arranging lodging and transport facilities for them.

They visited the Bijapur district hospital where doctors taught them the importance of approaching such medical facilities in times of ill health rather than village quacks and tantriks called "baigas", the official said.

They were also taken to the famous Chitrakoot Waterfall on the Indravati River in Bastar, the state-run Eklavya Ashram school, the Jagdalpur police officer's mess and the Bijapur district sports academy, he informed.

"I had never gone out of my village and had never seen railway tracks, trains, hospitals. It was like a new world to me and I will tell my parents about these things," said Shanti Uika, a student from Gangaloor area.

Garg said that children were also told to go back to their villages and tell their parents about voting rights and the importance of exercising their franchise.

The state is slated for Assembly polls later this year.