CBI takes over Bihar shelter home rape case

The Central Bureau of Investigation yesterday took over the case of alleged rapes in a shelter home in Bihar’s Muzaffarpur district.The agency filed a ‘first information report’ to probe the crime in which at least 34 minor girls were allegedly victimised, officials said.The move comes a day after the Congress demanded a Supreme Court-monitored CBI inquiry and sought Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s attention towards such crimes.A CBI official said the agency registered a case on the request of the Bihar government and a notification from central government.Under pressure from the opposition, Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar on Thursday recommended a CBI probe into the series of rapes that he described as “a heinous crime”.The agency official said: “The CBI has taken over the investigation of the FIR of Mahila Police Station, Muzaffarpur registered on May 31 related to the mental, physical and sexual exploitation of girl children residing at Children Home at Sahu Road in the town.“The case has been registered against officers and employees of Balika Grih Sahu Road, Muzaffarpur.”It is alleged that officials and employees of Girl’s Children Home run by Seva Sankalp Evam Vikas Samiti had been mentally, physically and sexually exploiting girls residing there, said the official.Muzaffarpur police chief Harpreet Kaur said that they will hand over the case files to the CBI team.The shelter home was sealed after the sexual abuse came to light during a social audit by the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai. The report was submitted to the state Social Welfare Department, which asked officials to lodge a complaint.A medical examination of 44 girls of the home revealed that 21 of them were raped. The inmates narrated their ordeal to the judicial magistrate and women’s commission members on how they were brutally beaten up by the shelter home staff, including women, several times for refusing to have forced sex with visitors.Several prominent names have emerged in the alleged sexual exploitation case including the husband of Bihar’s Social Welfare Minister Manju Verma who was a regular visitor. The minister has refuted the charges saying her husband’s name was dragged into the controversy to defame her.The shelter home is run by an NGO which is headed by Brajesh Singh Thakur and many girls have testified against him. Thakur has been arrested along with other staff members by the Bihar police.In another horrific crime against women being reported from Bihar, a minor was repeatedly raped by her school teachers and principal, the abuse going on for several months. The 13-year-old victim also alleges that she was also raped by 15 students of the same school. She said she was blackmailed and gang-raped ever since her father went to jail. Last week, the principal, a teacher and two students from the school were arrested. According to the police complaint of the victim, her father went to jail in December 2017. In the seven months since then, she was brutally assaulted by her teachers, principal as well as fellow students. In her statement to the police, she has named all 18 people.The vicious cycle of abuse began in December 2017 when she was allegedly raped by a classmate who blackmailed her. Soon more classmates got to know about it and started blackmailing her. Her teachers and principal also assaulted and blackmailed the minor, reports said.