Janjivan Bureau / New Delhi : The Supreme Court on Thursday took suo motu cognisance of Muzaffarpur shelter home rapes and issued notices to the Bihar government and the Union Ministry of Women and Child Development.
A Bench of Justice Madan B Lokur and Justice Deepak Gupta also restrained the media from publishing photos, including morphed ones, of victims or interviews with them.
The Bench, which is already seized of issues relating to jail and observation homes, took a suo motu cognisance of the issue after receiving a letter from Patna highlighting the plight of girls in Muzaffarpur shelter home for destitutes where dozens of inmates were sedated and raped.
Many of the girls were missing and it’s alleged that those who resisted were killed.
The shelter home is run by a local NGO, Seva Sankalp and Vikas Samiti. Brajesh Thakur who ran the NGO has since been arrested.
The Nitish Kumar government has already handed over the probe to the CBI.
The matter came to light after a social audit report of Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS) alleged that 42 girl inmates of the Muzaffarpur Balika Grih had allegedly been sexually assaulted. The inmates were allegedly beaten up or drugged before being sexually abused.
One of the victims alleged that those who resisted rape were killed. A girl was beaten up and killed and her body was buried on the stay-home premises, she had alleged.
The girl inmates were shifted from Muzaffarpur to other homes. Medical tests confirmed that the girls had been raped.
