The Supreme Court on Monday lashed out at the Bihar government while seeking an explanation about the reasons why a former minister in the cabinet of Nitish Kumar government who was linked with the Muzzaffarpur shelter home case has not yet been traced and arrested.
“Fantastic… ex-cabinet minister is not traceable… You (Bihar government) will have to explain… How is it that no one knows where the ex-minister is?,” said the top court while asking the Bihar’s Director General Of Police to be present in the court when the case comes up again on November 27. The top court has also summoned the Chief Secretary and asked him to personally explain “why action was not taken against 14 other shelter homes, against which, cases of torture and sexual abuse of girls, were reported by the Tata Institute of Social Sciences”.
Only a fortnight ago, the court had observed that “all is not well and it is very strange that the government doesn’t know where its former minister is”. The SC comments came during a hearing in the Muzaffarpur shelter home rape case when the Bihar government informed the court that former social welfare minister Manju Verma has gone into hiding and could not be traced by the state police. Verma’s husband Chandrashekhar was the owner of the shelter home where several girls were allegedly raped. Since then, the state has been maintaining that the former minister was not traceable.
A bench of Justices M B Lokur, S A Nazeer and Deepak Gupta also directed that Brajesh Thakur, prime accused in the Muzaffarpur shelter homes sexual abuse case, be shifted to the Patiala High security jail in Punjab from Bihar’s Badarpur jail. The alleged sexual exploitation of the girls was first highlighted in an audit report submitted by the Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS) to the state’s social welfare department. Chandrashekhar had surrendered before a Begusarai court.
On November 1, a non-bailable warrant was issued against Verma, after the SC had pulled up the Bihar government and on three successive days said, “why wasn’t she arrested, is the former minister above the law, and is something wrong with the Bihar government”.
The warrant, against the former minister, was issued for a case under the Arms Act. In August, the police had raided Mrs Verma in connection with the Muzaffarpur shelter home rapes and seized 50 live cartridges from one of her houses.
Over 40 young girls were sexually abused in the Muzaffarpur shelter home. The first case was filed on May 31 against 11 people, including Brajesh Thakur.
—India Legal Bureau