Excerpt from Mid-Day.com, on July 31, 2010 : Read Full Article
He had stepped out of home to go to the bank. Instead, he landed in a home for beggars, thanks to the unnecessary and extra concern shown by a policeman.
Colaba resident Robert D’souza (62), who is visually challenged, was picked up by a police constable in the first week of this month and, much against D’souza’s wishes, taken to the Beggars’ Home in Chembur.
The beggars’ home is, as its name suggests, a charitable home that takes cares of mendicants.
“That morning, I was passing by Cusrow Baug in Colaba, to go Central Bank’s Fort branch. I am blind and also have a wound,” said D’souza.
“With a walking stick for support, I was requesting passers-by to help me to the bus stop when a sturdy hand grabbed me by the arm and dragged into a waiting vehicle.” D’souza said no questions were asked and before he knew it he was taken to the home for beggars. “How right is it on the part of the police to do such a thing?” he asks staring into nothingness.
This is the second such case of a man who is not a beggar but is being forced to live in a beggars’ home.
D’souza, a bachelor, has since been moved out of the home for beggars and has now been shifted to a home for dying destitute persons at Tagore Nagar in Vikhroli.
“Life at the beggars’ home was a nightmare. We were treated worse than prisoners and the food served was not meant for human beings,” D’souza told MiD DAY. “We were served half-cooked rice, a watery dal and boiled brinjal for lunch and dinner.”
This was in sharp contrast to the daily diet regimen that this former employee of a multinational firm was used to in the comforts of his home. “My daily diet comprised a chocolate-flavoured milk drink, sweet corn soup and bread.”
D’souza is annoyed at the constable who mistook him for a beggar and took him to the charity home. Life was always a bed of roses for D’souza till his mother, Mariya, passed away 17 years ago.
