KOCHI: Anyone who step into Capernaum Charitable Trust, Vaduthala, can see a five-year-old boy roaming around the four walls of the building. His head is fully bruised and hands tied with a ragged cloth.
“If we unties his hands, he becomes violent. He is autistic. If we don’t tie his hands, the wounds will never heal,” says Sr Juliet, the founder of Capernaum Charitable Trust.
Today, Capernaum, a non-profit NGO and voluntary organisation, is a solace for many like this young boy. It has been protecting and providing to 200 other people who finds themselves at the receving end of fate.
But, the lack of care takers and other facilities is affecting its functioning.
Capernaum houses both mentally and physically challenged people who are abandoned. Most of the residents are either non-Malayalis or not in a mental state to converse. Sr Juliet days the staff here have to toil the entire day to take care of them in a hygenic environment.
“The staff have to keep a constant vigil to clean the inmates too,” she says.
The organisation has 40 staff working there day and night and most inmates lead an unrestricted life.
“They damage the doors, switches and tiles. They don’t understand even if they are asked not to do it. So we have to keep repairing it. The majority of inmates are brought in either by the police or the Child Welfare Committee,” says Sr Juliet who began the organisation in 2003.
“A person with a physical ailment can survive in this world but not a mentally-challenged person. This realisation inspired me to devote my life to the mentally-challenged,” says Sr Juliet.