UP child rights panel sends notice to Priyanka Gandhi over shelter home remarks

The Congress leader in a Facebook post on Sunday had attacked the BJP government in Uttar Pradesh over a media report that 57 girls tested positive for coronavirus at the state-run child shelter home, with two girls being "found" pregnant, including one HIV positive.

The Uttar Pradesh child rights panel on Thursday issued a notice to Congress general secretary Priyanka Gandhi, asking her to file a reply within three days for her “misleading" comments on the Kanpur shelter home. The Congress leader has also been asked to issue a denial of her Facebook post, with the panel saying the remarks were "without any proof" and hurt the honour of the girls lodged at the shelter home. The commission has sought her reply within three days and action under a relevant section will be taken against her if she did not issue a denial of her post, UP State Commission for Protection of Child Rights chairman Vishesh Gupta said. The Congress leader in a Facebook post on Sunday had attacked the BJP government in Uttar Pradesh over a media report that 57 girls tested positive for coronavirus at the state-run child shelter home, with two girls being "found" pregnant, including one HIV positive. She had equated the incident with the Muzaffarpur shelter home case in Bihar, where cases of alleged sexual abuse were reported. The Kanpur district administration too had clarified that the five of the 57 girls who tested positive for coronavirus had come to the shelter home when they were already pregnant.

The authorities had also lodged a case against unknown people for “misleading public” by allegedly claiming that two girls there suffered from HIV and hepatitis. Taking a suo motu notice of the Congress leader's remarks, the commission said her post was "misleading and without any proof", which hurts the honour of the girls.

The notice said some media organisations did misleading reporting without any proof to malign the image of the government. "The HIV reports of the girls are also negative. Due to the misleading post, these minor girls had undergone mental pain and they are hurt with baseless and misleading comments," the notice said..