When police find a mentally ill man wandering the expressway, or a government hospital discharges an elderly patient no one comes to collect, the destination is usually the same: The Earth Saviours Foundation’s shelters in Bandhwari and Mandawar.
The NGO, founded in 2008 by the late Ravi Kalra and now run by his son Jas Kalra, houses close to 1,300 people. A growing share of them arrive not through the foundation’s own street rescues but through referrals from hospitals, police stations, courts, and district welfare departments. Foundation staff say such requests come in daily from across the NCR.
The city’s own shelter capacity has not kept pace. Government-run night shelters cater mainly to the transient homeless and are not equipped for long-stay residents who need medical or psychiatric care. That gap is what the foundation ends up filling, without government funding, running instead on public donations. How those residents are admitted, and how they are cared for once inside, has drawn the attention of the state’s human rights body on more than one occasion.
The foundation’s work has drawn notice from that body on more than one occasion. In August 2023, Deep Bhatia, then Acting Chairperson of the Haryana Human Rights Commission, visited the BandhwariSewa Dham and afterward described Jas as a selfless karamyogi carrying forward his late father’s mission, a beacon of hope for the underprivileged and a role model for the youth.
Two years later, in June 2025, Kuldip Jain, Member (Judicial) of the same Commission, inspected the shelter and recorded much the same. He observed that the residents come from every part of the country and every walk of life, many of them elderly people abandoned by their families or left with no one at all, and that Jas was warmly greeted and shown deep gratitude by every resident he passed. Jain went on to recommend that senior district officials visit the shelter to lift the morale of staff and residents alike, and noted the importance of authorities consulting the foundation’s management before sending new admissions to ensure proper compliance and care.
