 Summary of this article
- The Maharashtra Prevention of Begging Act, 1960—and similar laws across India—allow police to arrest anyone “wandering aimlessly” or suspected of begging, criminalising poverty instead of addressing it through care and rehabilitation.
- Conditions in beggars’ homes are often inhumane, with overcrowding, lack of medical and psychiatric care, and indefinite detentions—leading to deaths.
- Despite constitutional guarantees of dignity and liberty, these colonial-era laws continue to punish the poor, homeless, and mentally ill, exposing deep systemic neglect.
“Madam, don’t worry. I will take you to the right place,” said the driver, smiling faintly. A man in his 50s, with the voice of someone who has waited too long for answers. “Three years ago, my father forgot his way home. I looked everywhere. One day I found him at the Beggars’ Home. He had stopped speaking by then.”
There are two buildings at the Beggars’ Home—one for men, one for women. Each gate opens into its own echo chamber. The corridors smell of boiled rice, bleach, and slow decay. The floors are cracked in places; the walls stained with forgotten monsoons. There’s a silence that doesn’t soothe, it crushes. They mutter to themselves, rocking gently like metronomes marking a time no one counts. Most come here with nothing, leave with less. Seven years, two years, indefinite. Forgotten time. Forgotten bodies. Names fade into numeric records. Bunk beds lined in rows, sheets seldom changed, clothes hanging on rusted wires. A tap leaks continuously in one corner—the sound of a slow, unending drip.
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