The Central Bureau of Investigation on Wednesday informed the Supreme Court that there was no evidence of murder of children in the Muzaffarpur shelter home in Bihar, PTI reported. The agency said that it had been completed its inquiry into the shelter home case.
The investigating agency said that forensic analysis revealed that two skeletons found in the premises were of a man and a woman. “No girl was killed in Muzaffarpur shelter home and skeletons found were not of inmate minors,” Attorney General KK Venugopal told the Supreme Court, according to ANI.
At least 34 inmates were allegedly drugged and raped at the shelter, law enforcement agencies had said. The CBI – in its chargesheet filed in December 2018 – alleged that the main accused, Brajesh Thakur, had coerced girls to dance to vulgar songs and have sexual intercourse with guests. Thakur is currently lodged in a high-security prison in Punjab.
During Wednesday’s hearing, Chief Justice of India SA Bobde accepted the agency’s status report and allowed two officials to be relieved from the inquiry team. The attorney general said that inquiry reports of rape and sexual assault allegations had been submitted to the courts concerned. He added that minors believed to be dead were later found alive.
The investigating agency had looked into cases of 17 shelter homes in Bihar and chargesheets were filed for 13 of them. In four cases, the preliminary inquiry was closed due to lack of evidence.
In June last year, the Supreme Court had given three months to the CBI to complete the investigation, including suspected murders, in the case. It had also asked the agency to widen its scope to include “outsiders” involved in the crime and to investigate the allegations of video recordings of the alleged assault under the Information Technology Act.
The alleged sexual exploitation came to light in April 2018 after Mumbai’s Tata Institute of Social Sciences submitted an audit report of 110 shelter homes in the state. The audit had been ordered by the state government, which filed a first information report against 11 people, including Thakur, on May 31, 2018.
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