Harsh Mander may have diverted funds from charities towards anti-CAA protests, alleges NCPCR

Former civil servant and professional agitator Harsh Mander received foreign funding for his charities, which he later diverted to fund the protests against the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA), alleges India’s federal child rights watchdog.

The National Commission for Protection of Child Rights (NCPCR) has called upon the Indian government to start an inquiry into the foreign links of this so-called human rights activist.

According to a report by the Russian news website Sputniknews, Mander runs a social justice think-tank called the Centre for Equity Studies, and two children’s shelter homes. The report states that the NCPCR has alleged that Mander has concealed his multiple sources of funding through several private investors.

In 2020, The Commune had reported that according to the Legal Rights Observatory (LRO), Mander’s Centre for Equity Studies (CES) received crores of rupees worth of funding from European Catholics and US-based Islamist organisations. 

“It is recommended that the Economic Offence Wing (EOW) of the Delhi Police, which is a specialised investigative agency in such matters, may examine the multiple sources of funding being given to these Homes and the use of the same. The accounts of these homes need to be audited and investigated for the above-mentioned financial irregularities”, states the NCPCR report, a copy of which has been seen by Sputnik.

The most serious accusations levelled by the NCPCR are that the money meant for two children’s shelters ― Khushi Rainbow Home for girls and the Ummeed Aman Ghar for boys ― was allegedly diverted to fund anti-India entities. What is more shocking is that there are claims that minors from these facilities were forced to participate in protests against the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA).

“During our investigation, we met several residents at these shelters who told us that they were sent to protest against the CAA last year and asked to chant anti-government slogans”, a senior NCPRC official claimed. “After reading the documents received from the organisation, the Commission discovered that besides the parent organisation – the Centre for Equity Studies – there were several other sources of funding for these two homes, including from other private organisations and the state government,” the report by the NCPCR says.

Earlier in January 2021, there were reports of the children living in these homes being subject to sexual harassment. 

The investigation by the NCPCR has revealed that controversial global charity Islamic Relief Worldwide (IRW), headquartered in Amman, Jordan and a charity registered at the Canadian High Commission’s address in New Delhi, regularly funded the two shelters through its “Dil Se” Campaign.

IRW is blacklisted in countries such as Israel, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Bangladesh due to the serious allegations that the organisation was illegally directing its funds to disseminate Islamist propaganda.

The UAE government in 2014 placed this Jordan-based charity on a list of proscribed organisations over alleged links to the Muslim Brotherhood, an Islamist movement also declared a terrorist outfit by Abu Dhabi and Saudi Arabia. However, these charges have been denied by IRW.

However, Harsh Mander has called all these accusations that are levelled against him as a witch hunt. He has said that the government was using one more of its agencies, the National Commission for the Protection of Child Rights (NCPCR), to advance its campaign against the peaceful protesters and dissenters, to defame him.

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