Bihar's shelter home tragedy is a case of a state failing its children

The officials, who were tasked with protecting the girls, would either turn a blind eye to these goings-on or were themselves exploiting them

It was around mid-July last year. Bihar was going through a political turmoil, with Chief Minister Nitish Kumar and Rashtriya Janata Dal chief Lalu Prasad Yadav, then alliance partners, engaged in a bitter war of words. The Central Bureau of Investigation had registered a case against Yadav, his wife Rabri Devi and their son Tejaswi Yadav (then deputy chief minister of Bihar), for alleged irregularities during the senior Yadav’s tenure as Union railway minister in 2006. While this was on, the state government’s social welfare department quietly engaged Koshish — a field action project of Tata Institute of Social Sciences,