Muzaffarpur shelter home case: SC to hear plea on its intervention in 2 weeks

The Supreme Court on Thursday agreed to hear after two weeks a petition seeking its intervention into the Muzaffarpur shelter home sexual assault case.

A bench of Justice S A Bobde and Justice S Abdul Nazeer agreed to hear the matter after two weeks.

During the hearing, a petitioner in the case said that the charge sheet filed by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) is under lighter offences and ignored rape and murder charges.

The petitioner said that investigation had been transferred to the CBI since the Bihar police was not investigating properly. He then went on to say that there are lapses in CBI's investigation into the matter.

The CBI failed to include murder and rape charges in the charge sheet even though many of the girls have given clear statements regarding the death of a girl and rape of several girls, the petitioner claimed.

"CBI investigation has done nothing to trace the uncles, that is, outsiders who came into the shelter home to assault the girls even though the girls have testified that several men from outside came into the shelter home. Also, the girls were taken outside the shelter home to be sexually assaulted," the petition noted.

The charge sheet filed by the CBI names 21 people including main accused Brajesh Thakur who used to run the state-funded NGO in Muzaffarpur where minor girls were allegedly sexually abused over a period of time.

The case pertains to 44 girls who used to reside at the state-run shelter home.

Earlier, a Supreme Court bench headed by Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi had transferred the trial of the case from Bihar to a Delhi court and ordered the judge to complete it within six months.

The apex court on October 31 last year had also rapped the Bihar Police for its failure in arresting former state minister Manju Verma, who came under scrutiny after it was found that her husband Chandrashekhar Verma allegedly had links with Thakur.