Muzaffarpur shelter home sex scandal: seven accused taken to

Seven accused in the shelter home sex scandal, including some key aides and close relatives of the prime accused Brajesh Thakur, were on Friday taken to Delhi for deposition before the Special POCSO court at Saket where the trial has been transferred by a Supreme Court order.

According to Sunil Kumar Maurya, Deputy Superintendent of the Khudiram Bose Central Prison here, the seven accused who were sent by train include Shaista Parveen alias Madhu

who ran many businesses of Thakur her relative Mohd Sahil alias Vicky, Thakurs uncle Ramanuj, a former Child Welfare Committee president Dilip Verma and the state-funded shelter homes manager Ramashankar Singh.

 

All the accused will be presented before the Saket court on the next date of hearing on Saturday.

Nearly a score of people have been arrested in connection with the scandal which came to light after sexual abuse of inmates was flagged by Mumbai-based Tata Institute of Social Sciences in a report of social audit.

The accused have been lodged in various jails across the state, while Thakur himself is lodged in a prison at Patiala.

Thakur owned the NGO Seva Sankalp Evam Vikas Samiti, which ran the shelter home located inside the premises of a Hindi daily he edited, which was located adjacent to his own residence.

He is currently lodged inside a jail at Patiala after a direction to the effect was issued to the CBI by the Supreme Court.

The scandal was handed over to the CBI in July last year, about a couple of months after the police lodged an FIR.

The Apex Court earlier this week expressed serious dissatisfaction with the tardy pace of investigations, rapped the Nitish Kumar government in the state for not doing its bit and ordered transfer of trial to the Saket court.

Meanwhile, municipal authorities also began the work of demolishing the structure inside which the Balika Grih (shelter home for girls) ran. In course of investigations, it came to light that the building was constructed illegally.

Demolition work had begun in December last year but was thereafter halted in view of Thakurs family moving a court challenging the same.

The court, however, disposed of the petition with a direction to the municipal authorities to look into the objections raised by the petitioners and, accordingly, take appropriate action.