Bihar Governor writes to state and central governments, seeks audit of all shelter homes

Bihar Governor Satya Pal Malik has written to the state and the central governments seeking strict against all shelter homes indulged in wrongdoing. The Governor has written to Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, Union Law Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad and Chief Justice of Patna High Court over the issue.

In his letter, the Governor made reference to the Muzaffarpur shelter home sexual abuse case and asked for monitoring of all shelter homes in Bihar, seeking strict against those found guilty.

This comes as two shelter homes, run by the same owner, Brijesh Thakur, have comes under scanner in Muzaffarpur. While at least 34 girls have allegedly been raped in one shelter home, 11 women have gone missing from the other.

The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) has been handed over the probe into the case concerning sexual abuse of girls in Balika Grih, run by Seva Sankalp Evam Vikas Samiti.

It is alleged that officials and employees of the shelter home used to mentality, physically and sexually exploit girls residing there. Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar had last week issued the orders to the Chief Secretary, Principal Home Secretary and DGP to hand over the investigation into the case to the CBI.

More than 40 girls had been lodged at the shelter home and medical reports suggest that over half of them may have had sexual intercourse at some point of time. The NGO running the shelter home has been blacklisted and all the girls have been moved to shelter homes in other districts while the premises has been sealed.

Meanwhile, a fresh case has been registered against Thakur in connection with the disappearance of 11 women from the other shelter home.

According to the complaint, when a survey of the second shelter home was done by the district child protection unit in March, presence of 11 women was registered. However, when the officials visited the shelter home for another survey in June, they found the shelter home locked.