Lucknow, May 27: The Allahabad district administration has rescued four children, three of them from Begusarai in Bihar, from a juvenile shelter home after coming across a hair-raising video clip that went viral on social media sites.

The other child belongs to Amethi in Uttar Pradesh.

The kids, aged between eight and 12 years, had run away from their homes in search of jobs and were sleeping on railway platforms for the past several days.

The Railway Childline - a joint initiative of the Union ministry of women and child development and the railways aimed at helping children found in train stations - had picked them up from Allahabad Junction station yesterday.

The children were sent to Manav Kalyan Sewa Samiti - a shelter home of the state government in Rangpura area of Phaphamau. But instead of dealing with them sympathetically, the officials at the home, according to the clip, tied the children with ropes, thrashed them and allegedly didn't provide them food.

The children, who belong to poor families, are seen in the video footage yelling in pain and begging to the home's officials to release them.

"They were not ready to live here. So we had tied them for a few minutes. But it is wrong to say that we treated them badly," said Laxmi Pandey, superintendent of the shelter home in Allahabad, 200km south of Lucknow.

But the authorities today suspended Pandey and one more employee of the shelter home.

Punit Shukla, additional district magistrate (city), and Pankaj Mishra, district probation officer, visited the home today and found that the officials used to mistreat the children.

"Three children belong to same family of Begusarai district in Bihar. We have handed them to their uncle, Gulab Chand Yadav, who arrived here today. The other child is from Amethi. His father Rajesh Yadav received his son and returned home," Shukla said.

Shukla said it was also a crime to take a camera inside the shelter home. "We have been trying to find out how video cameras were taken inside the home and the incident was recorded. As per the Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Act, clicking photographs and shooting videos inside a shelter home is strictly prohibited. Even if the NGO had flouted the rules with a bona fide intention, it should have shared the video with the officials concerned only. Appropriate action would be take against those who were found involved in it," the officer added.