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Railway police 'rescue' 163 Bihar children. Parents say they were going to madrasas to study

Scroll | April 15, 2026 11:39 AM CST

Every year, Mohammed Sajjad’s two sons travel nearly 1,800 km from their home in Bihar’s Araria district to Karnataka’s Bidar to attend classes for eight months at a madrasa.

“They get free education, free meals and free books there,” Sajjad said. “We don’t have a very good education system in Bihar so I started sending them to the Bidar madrasa three years ago.”

On the morning of April 11, Sajjad’s two sons – 13-year-old Shahnawaz and 11-year-old Shahbaz – boarded the Patna Purna Express from Patna station along with 13 other boys from their village, Kundilpur. They were accompanied by their 21-year-old teacher, Mohammad Zahir, who is from the same village, Sajjad said. They were supposed to reach Maharashtra the next day and travel onwards in a bus to Bidar.

But that night, around 8, a team of Government Railway Police and Railway Protection Force forced the children to alight from the train at Katni railway station in Madhya Pradesh, alleging that they were being trafficked. Their teacher, Zahir, was booked under Section 143 (4) of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, which relates to child trafficking.

The children with Zahir were not the only group to face scrutiny. The team of railway police said they “rescued” 163 children, all...