Somewhere in the middle of Pallavi Paul's new film, The Blind Rabbit, is a heart-rending story of children arrested during the Emergency unable to remember their home address when the time comes for their release. There were hundreds of boys aged 7-16 who were picked up from the streets during 1975-77 to bump up the number of daily detentions.
"At the time police were instructed to make 18-20 arrests every day," says a retired police officer who is interviewed in the film. The officer, whose identity is not revealed, goes on to say that under pressure "very young children" were also put in jails and remand homes after "falsely" tagging them as "found while committing a crime".
