socialmedian: Delhi jails street beggars for 2010 Games

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Delhi jails street beggars for 2010 Games

Source: The Guardian

Nov 08, 2009

Summary

Ratnabai Kale, her daughter and her sister are the latest victims of a draconian clean-up to improve the country's image abroad

The three women were at a bus stop when the police rolled up. "You are begging, get in the van," the officers told them. They protested their innocence, but to no avail.

After they were locked up in beggars' prison behind the high, barbed-wire-topped walls of the Nirmal Chhaya complex, next door to Delhi's Tihar jail, 50-year-old Ratnabai Kale twice tried to hang herself with her own sari.

As India's capital stumbles towards the starting line for next year's Commonwealth Games, draconian orders have gone out to clear the streets of beggars. Teams of police, backed by mobile courtrooms, are roaming the city, dispensing summary justice to those whose faces don't fit. There are an estimated 60,000 beggars on Delhi's streets – many estimates put the figure much higher – and tens of thousands more people who live rough on roadside scraps of land.

The rationale for the purge is simple: the image of an outstretched hand does not sit easily with

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