Janjivan Bureau / New Delhi : The number of girls raped at a government shelter home in Bihar has gone up to 34, according to a fresh medical report, triggering a sharp attack on the Nitish Kumar government from the opposition’s Tejashwi Yadav. Today Congress demand a Supreme Court monitored CBI enquiry in the case so that the culprits are truly brought to book.
Earlier, medical examination of 29 of the 42 inmates of the shelter home in Muzaffarpur district confirmed that they were raped for months.
Ten out of 11 accused have been arrested. After pressure from the opposition, state government on Thursday handed over the investigation into the alleged sexual assault to the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI). The police filed a chargesheet against the ten who were arrested.
Congress leader Shaktisinh Gohil, Bihar In-Charge, Ranjeet Ranjan MP, Priyanka Chaturvedi, Convenor AICC Communications and Sharmishtha Mukherjee, President DPMC said to media persons Today that shocking details of sexual abuse, violence, mental and physical harassment of women & girls, Grave exploitation of people suffering from mental illness have been found in a Social Audit conducted by Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS) across 110 such institutions in 38 districts in Bihar. Social Audit reveals that these people are simply ‘rotting in these spaces’ in some form or the other across these institutions.
He said Chief Minister, Nitish Kumar is known as the ‘सुशासन बाबू”. Is this the Good Governance Model of the BJP-JDU?
Gohil said the TISS Report which mentions 15 institutions under ‘Grave Concerns’ which require immediate action is not been taken seriously by the Nitish Govt. Intriguingly, action has been taken only on one such home shelter in Muzaffarpur, while the outrageous crimes committed against women, children young boys and girls which are being sexually exploited and beaten in the rest of the 14 such homes have been conveniently ignored.
Almost all institutions were found to be running in violation of the Juvenile Justice Act. According to the report, there are 15 Institutions which required immediate action.
Fearing political backlash, an apathetic Nitish Kumar Govt hurriedly shifted the victim girls from Muzaffarpur to Mokama, Patna and Madhubani, after which they filed an FIR.
The arrested key accused in this case Brijesh Thakur is being publically supported by President of BJP’s Youth Wing, BJYM, Sudhanshu Pathak who has demanded his release threatening a ‘Agitation’. Instead of seeking justice, for the victims and demanding harsh punishment for the accused, the BJP, like in other similar cases is brazening it out, is busy protecting the predators.
The family of the ‘Baal Sanrakshak Adhikari’ (Ravi Roushan) has now made sensational claims backed by documents and a CD as a proof that the husband of Social Development Minister Manju Verma (of JDU); Chandrashekhar Verma (referred to as Netaji in the girls’ statements) used to regularly visit this controversial home shelter in seclusion. This has raised several uncomfortable questions regarding the role of a Minister and her husband in the Nitish Kumar Government.
Alleging a shoddy investigation and a deliberate cover up, the family has also stated that if the photograph of the Minister’s husband- Chandrashekhar Verma is shown to the victim girls, they will definitely recognize the culprits of these heinous crimes. This has again put the needle of suspicion towards the role of the Minister’s husband.
BJP leaders have become repeated offenders in exploiting women and then shamelessly brazenly defending their own. Recent gruesome crimes of Unnao and Kathua are testimony to that. While the PM himself often makes misogynist statements, he has never spoken a word against his own. We want to ask the PM and his partner in crime, Shri Nitish Kumar- when will they speak a word on this gruesome incident?
After a lot of pressure from the opposition in Bihar, the Nitish Kumar Government has finally been forced to recommend a CBI probe into this. But why have they not even filed an FIR in the rest of the 14 home shelter and institutions mentioned under ‘Grave Concern, requiring Immediate Action’ of the TISS Report? Why no CBI investigation in all these cases?
The Social Audit has pointed out some serious lacunas and shortcomings in these Govt funded institutions. Will the NDA Govt take action to improve the unlivable conditions and ensure fool proof security in these shelter homes?
The opportunistic alliance of BJP-JDU in Bihar has just completed 1 year in power. It is a year marred of Misgovernance and Anarchy.
Horrifying stories of torture and exploitation are emerging from the shelter home in Bihar’s Muzaffarpur where 29 girls were raped by operators and visitors last year, according to the state women commission.
Members of the Bihar state women commission who met the rescued inmates of Muzaffarpur short stay shelter home at the Mokama Nazareth Academy on Thursday said the girls were duped and drugged to keep them silent and allow sexual exploitation.
The girls were starved and beaten with shoes at any hint of rebellion.
Those who complained and protested were stripped, beaten and burnt with cigarettes. A girl who dared to stand up to the oppressors, despite repeated threats, was beaten to death and her body disposed of in a rickshaw, the commission said.
Altogether 31 girls rescued from the Muzaffarpur shelter home are staying at the Nazareth Academy, Mokama where they are being counselled by two experts from Bangalore and Delhi for the last few days.
“Most of the girls are in a better condition from the day I met them at a hospital in Patna. But the memories of physical and mental abuse they have suffered may take time to wipe out. At the shelter home they were denied food and clothes and were beaten with shoes,” Dilmani Mishra, state women commission chairperson said.
She said out of frustration, one of the inmate had even tried to end her life by slashing her wrist with a broken piece of windowpane glass, but her wounds were nursed and she somehow survived. As her wounds have not healed completely, she is undergoing treatment by a visiting doctor at the Nazareth Academy. Another girl had etched out the name of her brother on her wrist as a sign of protest, she added.
Dr Nikki Hembram, another member of the commission who had spoken to the rescued girls, said all their protests and oppositions had failed to give them any solace. “There was none to help them and in utter helplessness they had compromised and continued to bear the torture and trauma. All these years officials from child welfare committee (CWC)and district monitoring committee kept visiting the shelter home, but no one had the courage to speak out.”
She said, it was not possible for the girls to speak out before the CWC members because the shelter home employees never left them alone during those moments. “Fear of being punished if they opened her mouth loomed large on each one of them. The officials kept making routine enquiry and monitoring while the girls kept giving positive replies,” she said.
Dr Hembram said, “The girl (who was killed) continued to oppose the shelter home employees’ directions despite repeated threatening and tortures. One evening, she was brutally beaten even after she felt unconscious. When she stopped breathing, her body was packed in a sack and was thrown down the stairs. Next morning, it was loaded on a rickshaw and disposed of somewhere,” she said.
Reports of repeated sexual abuse of inmates at the short stay home in Muzaffarpur surfaced after Mumbai’s Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS) carried out a social audit of shelter homes across Bihar last year. The institute submitted its report in April this year. The government lodged a first information report on May 31.
