KATHMANDU, NEPAL – For Reeta Nepali, 9, home is the Central Jail in Kathmandu, Nepal’s capital city.
She wakes up early each morning and helps her mother cook food and do dishes. Then, she wanders the corridors, dragging her tiny hands along the rough concrete walls. Reeta lives in the Central Jail with her mother, Maili Nepali, who was convicted on drug related charges four years ago.
“I don’t want to live in the caged environment,” Reeta says. “I want to go to school like other children my age.”
During the four years that Reeta has lived in the jail, she has become an avid reader and is currently reading a book of poetry by Laxmi Prasad Devkota, one of Nepal’s most famous writers.
“I wanted to study, but I was unfortunate to live a life inside this jail where there is no education for children,” she says. Her mother, who is semi-literate, teaches Reeta about constructing sentences every morning and evening.
"My daughter would already have gone to school had I not been imprisoned. My daughter is already 9, but she hasn’t got any opportunity to go to school yet,” says the elder Nepali, who is serving an eight-year sentence. Prison facilities here are not equipped to provide education for these children, though local culture mandates young children stay with their mothers even when they are incarcerated.
Like Reeta, Surendra Rai, 4, also lives in prison.
He has been living in the Bhojpur Prison in an eastern district of Nepal with his mother for the last two years. Surendra says he does not know why his mother is in jail.
“My mother is in the jail, I will continue to stay with her until the authorities allow,” he told The Press Institute during a telephone interview conducted with his mother. Surendra says he wants to be an engineer one day and his mother, Deu Kumari Rai, says she hopes officials at the prison will soon release her son and allow him to stay with relatives.
Rai was sentenced to 20 years in jail for her involvement in the murder of her husband’s second wife, Subbeni Rai. Rai admitted to the crime, saying she and one of her husband’s relatives — who is still at large —committed the murder in hopes that Rai would regain her husband’s love, which she felt she lost when he entered into a polygamous marriage.
Chattra Shrestha, the prison warden, says he is also concerned about the boy’s future. “This child shouldn’t be here, but what he can do since he is too young and has to stay with his mother.” Shrestha would not comment on Rai’s pleas for her son to stay with relatives.
Reeta and Surendra are not the only children in Nepal being raised by their mothers in the prison system. There are more than 550 women in Nepal serving their jail sentences with their children, according to data from the Home Ministry. However, since there has been no formal study of children living in prisons, some local NGOs say it is likely that more than 1,000 children live with their mothers in prisons across the country.
“It is not possible to count the numbers of children living in prisons. They keep on coming and going along with their parents,” says Ram Babu Bhattarai, the former head of the Central Jail in Kathmandu. “Also some organizations and people come to help them and take them out of jails.”
According to Bhattarai, the government and the concerned ministries have never had a policy to provide education or welfare programs for the children living in jails with their mothers. He says it has always fallen to local NGOs and international organizations to help them.
“The state should have a policy to provide them education free of cost. The children shouldn’t suffer in the name of punishing their parents for the crime they have committed,” Bhattarai says.
Laxmi Tamang, 12, used to live in the Central Jail of Kathmandu with her mother, Khum Maya Tamang. Laxmi lived with her aunt when her mother initially went to jail, but Laxmi was sent to the prison when her care became a financial hardship. Her mother is serving 10 years for dealing drugs. In the jail, Laxmi says, she experienced the worst times of her life.
Laxmi and her mother shared a cell with five other women. She was constantly scolded for waking up early to use the toilet. “I can’t play in the jail’s corridor as other people warn me for producing sounds. They chide me for disturbing them by opening the door of [the] toilet,” she says.
”That was the worst time I had ever spent in my life. My mother’s friends used to smoke inside the room. They always used dirty words and shouted so loudly. Some of them used to fight with each other. Often I felt so sacred to live there. Jail is a really dirty place. The only thing I liked about jail was being close to my mom,” Laxmi says.
Laxmi’s wish to live outside the prison in order to pursue her studies came true three years ago when she met Pushpa Basnet, the executive director of the Early Childhood Development Center, ECDC. To date, Basnet has helped 38 children who lived in prison with their mothers move out of the jails.
Basnet, known locally as “the mother of 38 children,” is working for the welfare of children with parents who are serving jail sentences. She says she was 20 when she first entered a jail as part of a college assignment. It was an encounter with a 1-year-old child that changed her life.
“She pulled my Kurta shawl and that was an eye opener for me. Then I made a promise to take this kid out of the jail because every child has the right to live [in] a peaceful and healthy environment with education,” Basnet says. “I went back home, met my parents and told them about this. But my parents opposed my idea and said that it was a big issue. They told me that it was the time to think about myself, not about the li[ves] of others.”
Ignoring her parents’ advice, Basnet established ECDC and says she plans to dedicate her life to helping the hundreds of children growing up in prisons here.
”I get full satisfaction from my work. Our life becomes beautiful if we help others,” Basnet says. “Today, if I give education to these children, there will be less crime in our country tomorrow and at the same time their future will be bright. Many of the children may land in prison like their parents if not taught the value of life,” she says. The 20 children who are currently living at the ECDC Shelter call Basnet “mamu” or mother.
“I am happy that mamu brought me out of the jail,” says Laxmi. “Otherwise I would never have gotten a chance to see the world.”
Laxmi’s mother says she feels blessed to see her daughter growing mentally and physically at ECDC. “If she had stayed with me she would not have [had] a chance to study. Rich people who are kept in prison keep their children at hostels and educate them. But we can’t afford to do that and can’t even request our relatives to do so,” Tamang says.
Today, Laxmi wants to be a photographer when she grows up. Basnet says she is determined to give her the chance to be anything she wants.
“No one should be deprived of education just because their parents have been imprisoned,” Basnet says. “When women are sentenced to jail, their biggest fear is what [will] happen to their children. By the time they get out of prison, we can facilitate their post-jail life by providing good education to their kids.”
Basnet says she has not yet fulfilled her goals and plans to expand the ECDC in order to provide the same opportunities to children living in prisons throughout the country.
