Child Found Tied in Chair; Woman Held

An Irvine child-care provider has been arrested on suspicion of felony child endangerment after police said she tied a 2-year-old girl to a highchair and left her in a darkened closet for up to three hours.

Harbans Ahuja, 45, operator of Harbans Family Childcare on Deerwood West in Irvine, was booked into Orange County Jail. Bail was set at $100,000.

“Anytime we find that a child has been abused, we take it seriously,” Lt. Jeff Love of the Irvine Police Department said Wednesday.

Love said a recently hired employee of the facility, which Ahuja operates out of her home, left Tuesday afternoon on the pretext of making a phone call, flagged down a patrol car and reported the incident to an officer.

“He went over there and found the child” in the closet, Love said. Though the toddler -- whose name was not released -- did not appear to have been physically harmed, Love said, “it’s too soon to tell” whether there would be any emotional damage. “There was no light, no food, no drink, no visual stimulation,” he said.

The facility, which was caring for 11 children, was shut down pending further investigation, according to Rapone Anderson, a spokesman for the California Department of Social Services, which licenses day-care providers.

All the children were returned to their parents, he said, and there appeared to be no other issues.

Ahuja was first licensed in 1995 to provide day care at a Garden Grove address, Anderson said. In 1998, he said, she was licensed at the Irvine address where, two years later, she was cited for operating above capacity and for employing an adult assistant who had not been fingerprinted as required by California law. Both infractions were corrected, Anderson said.

“We are cooperating with local law enforcement,” he said, adding that his department also was investigating the matter.

Depending on the outcome, Anderson said, the state could revoke Ahuja’s license and prohibit her from providing day care in California.