As many as 53 children forced into begging and rag picking were rescued from streets of Surat city and handed over to a welfare committee for rehabilitation, police said on Tuesday.
A total of 30 teams of local police and Anti Human Trafficking Unit (AHTU) were involved in identifying the child beggars in a month-long exercise.
These children were forced to beg on the city streets either by their parents, relatives, or caretakers, police said.
These children belonged to Gujarat, Bihar, Maharashtra, and Rajasthan. Most of them begged or picked rags to earn a livelihood at the behest of their parents, while some were orphans. One of them was with a man unrelated to him, police said.
After completing the procedure under the Juvenile Justice Act, the rescued children were handed over to the Child Welfare Committee (CWC) for further action.
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