The women inmates of the Vagrants' Home at Mirpur rebelled on Sunday and fought a running battle with police. Twenty of them were Injured and five arrested and taken away. After the fray, the girls were all transferred to another home at Pubail.

The girls went into such action to protest Inordinate delay In processing their release, food unfit for human consumption and misconduct by the guarding and supervising staff.

To detain one under the vagrancy law, section 54 of the code that Is, police need only a very subjective Impression that one is a vagrant or an addressless person. This was for long appreciated as not being a particularly bright piece of law proving very handy to police who could detain any man or woman under this without falling foul of law. In order that it doesn't readily establish a moger mul-luk, Sec. 54 was made an easily bailable thing. Now with millions of our citizens constituting floating populations, this law is a mockery of the fairness we expect from the state.

We know about our jails and hajats. Humanity is a word unknown there. And decency — the concept Is antithetical to these Institutions. One can only imagine what can be the state of these vagrant homes. Hell holes they must be. At Mirpur for six months there wasn't anyone examined and let out, for want of a magistrate. As if six months is nothing in one's life. This is a criminal attitude leading to the criminal act of detaining three hundred people, at Mirpur only, for nothing better than suspicion that they have no address. This is too much.

If such homes have at all to be there, they must be fit to live in. This is the responsibility of the government.