Indian City Jails Beggars Before Ivanka’s Visit
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By Aiden Pink November 12, 2017
The Indian city of Hyderabad is rounding up and jailing beggars before it hosts an international conference at which First Daughter Ivanka Trump will lead the American delegation.
Nearly 400 beggars were picked up and sent to a “rehabilitation center” at the Chanchalguda Jail, the Indian Express reported. The city’s police commissioner has banned all begging on city streets until January, and expects to round up around 6,000 homeless people in total.
“Some beggars argued that we were taking their freedom to live anywhere they want but we told them it was for their own good because they are going to the rehab center where they will be taken care of,” an official told the Express.
George Rakesh Babu, founder of the local homeless charity Good Samaritans, told The Washington Post that “The preparations are happening in every corner of our city. But the prison capacity in Hyderabad is not enough to look after all these people.” He noted that the central jail’s maximum capacity was only 1,000.
The Global Entrepreneurship Summit in Hyderabad, which The Washington Post referred to as “India’s Silicon Valley,” will begin November 28.
The theme of the summit is “Women First” and has the tagline “Prosperity for All.”
Similar roundups of undesirables took place in Hyderabad when then-U.S. President Bill Clinton visited in 2000, the Express noted.
Contact Aiden Pink at pink@forward.com or on Twitter, @aidenpink
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