Debarata Tom Sarkar Cruise...

Howrah man on a mission wheels his way into city

Priyanko Sarkar | TNN

Mumbai: It is easy to get fooled by 43-year-old Debabrata Sarkar’s slight frame. But this third degree black belt karate expert is a man on a mission. His aim is to rehabilitate prisoners, and identify and help schoolchildren with behavioural problems.

He has travelled on his bike from Kolkata across Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra and plans to end his journey in Gandhinagar and then return to West Bengal, notching up over a thousand kilometres in the process.

Sarkar says he drew inspiration from his late father, a police inspector who helped many prisoners. “But some incidents in my childhood also changed my life,’’ he says. The Howrah resident had once gone to watch a Hindi movie starring Amitabh Bachchan and received a sound thrashing from his brother, forcing him to run away to Mumbai. “I was a naughty 10-year old. I came to Grant Road and worked as a domestic help for a fortnight before calling off the whole thing and returning home,” recalls Sarkar.

But that adventure paved way for many more such trips in his life. “On numerous occasions, I was put behind bars where I realised how easy it is for criminals to get back to crime because of lack of rehabilitation measures,” he says.

It was then that he founded an NGO called Salkia Safar to help criminals. He now plans to go to school along with psychiatrists and identify “problemchildren’’. He says he has not seen Minority Report, but his ideas are close to what Tom Cruise and his team set out to do: eliminate crime before it actually happens.

“But it is not an easy task convincing ministers, jail authorities and even the criminals. Nobody trusts us initially. Nobody has given us funds too,” he rues, half-smiling at the irony of it all before adding, “The system is not foolproof. I can’t promise that crime will come down to zero but we have to find out why students of international schools are shooting each other, isn’t it?”

LOOKING AHEAD: Debabrata Sarkar wants to rehabilitate prisoners and identify and help children with behavioural problems