The Bengaluru police team probing the alleged abuse of toddlers at a daycare centre run by IT firm Capgemini at Brookefield in the city has decided to check if the whistleblower, Sujatha, had any ulterior motive.
Sujatha is among the six people under the scanner but the police’s decision to name her as the second accused has evoked outrage on social media. HAL police station arrested Vijayalakshmi, 55, an employee of the daycare centre, on Friday on charges of physically abusing the toddlers under her care. The next day, Sujatha was arrested.
The second arrest raised questions about child safety, corporate daycare monitoring, and the protection of those who highlight such issues to the public. The arrest of Sujatha triggered a debate on social media with a section of users seeking the scalp of the police officer who arrested her.
Kolar resident Sujatha worked as a caregiver at the creche before being sacked. The police said Sujatha took the help of an employee of the centre to record the videos of children being abused by the caregivers.
Social media users also slammed the parents of the abused toddlers, who shied away from speaking to the media out of fear of getting terminated from Capgemini. One user wrote on X: “All employees, including the parents, have sold their souls to corporates.”
An investigating officer told The Telegraph that the two accused are in judicial custody. “Sujatha joined the daycare centre in May. She had frequent disagreements with other staff members, including the supervisor. This led to her termination in June and she was also denied salary. We are examining whether there has been a delay on the part of Sujatha in bringing the abuse of toddlers before the authorities,” he said.
The police suspect foul play as Sujatha shared the videos only after she was sacked. Despite recording the atrocities at the daycare centre on June 22, the Child Welfare Council received the videos in the last week of the month. The police are also looking into the veracity of the videos to determine whether they were edited or tampered with. The videos are being checked at the forensic laboratory.
Sujatha had told the police that she recorded the videos on June 22 and passed them on to an acquaintance, Gautham, who forwarded them to the child protection hotline.
According to the police, the videos purportedly showed caregivers threatening toddlers, aged between two and three years, when they cried or caused disturbance.
It is alleged that the women put children inside a front-loading washing machine, made them sit on a western-style toilet, sprayed water into their mouths using a toilet jet spray, locked them inside bathrooms, and scolded them into keeping quiet.
On June 29, the police filed an FIR against Vijayalakshmi, Manjula, Sindhu, Bhavani and Bindu, the five ayaahs (caregivers) at the creche. The supervisor, Manjula, is absconding. It was Manjula who had terminated Sujatha. The other three employees were allowed to go after the videos showed them helping the toddlers in a washroom. The FIR was filed after Tilakesh Kumar, a legal-cum-probation officer, received videos of the abuse and filed a complaint with the police.
Capgemini, the IT firm on whose campus the daycare centre operates, had said in a statement that its foremost priority is the health, safety and well-being of its employees and their families.