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Regular-article-logo Wednesday, 24 April 2024

Fresh FIR reveals trail of horrors

A fresh FIR has been lodged with the Muzaffarpur Town police station in connection with the alleged kidnapping of one of the four girls who had disappeared five years ago from Balika Grih, the shelter home where at least 34 minor girls were drugged, tortured and raped.

Ramashankar Published 04.08.18, 12:00 AM
A file picture of the Balika Grih in Muzaffarpur

Patna: A fresh FIR has been lodged with the Muzaffarpur Town police station in connection with the alleged kidnapping of one of the four girls who had disappeared five years ago from Balika Grih, the shelter home where at least 34 minor girls were drugged, tortured and raped.

The new case was registered on the statement of sub-inspector Jitendra Mahto, who returned to Muzaffarpur from Uttar Pradesh on Thursday. The 15-year-old girl was found at Muzaffarpur railway station in 2013 and subsequently handed over to the Balika Grih run by the Seva Sankalp Evam Vikas Samiti whose proprietor Brajesh Thakur is a key accused in the shelter home horror case.

Four girls, including the 15-year-old, had gone missing from the Balika Grih on December 12, 2013, under mysterious circumstances.

However, the matter remained under wraps since then. The police swung into action when the sexual exploitation of girls living in the Balika Grih in Muzaffarpur, around 70km north of Patna, was revealed in May this year.

A police team was sent last week to Etawah in Uttar Pradesh, where the 15-year-old girl is from. The police team found that the girl had reached Kanpur and stayed with her uncle there. Later she fled from her uncle's house and started living in a school where the principal of the institution, Brajesh Vajpayee, allegedly raped her for 13 days. A police case on the rape was lodged in the local police station.

The girl, according to the fresh FIR, is at present living in a shelter home at Motinagar in Lucknow.

Muzaffarpur Town police station house officer (SHO) Mohammad Sujauddin confirmed that a kidnapping case has been lodged on the statement of a police officer after his return from Uttar Pradesh on Thursday.

Earlier, another girl who had escaped, a resident of Saraiya in Muzaffarpur, was found to be living with her in-laws after marriage.

The two other girls who fled, stated to be residents of Phulparas in Madhubani (Bihar) and Paharganj in New Delhi, are yet to be traced.

"The addresses of the two absconding girls have been found to be fake," said an investigating officer.

Eleven inmates of Swadhar Grih, another shelter home for adult women run by Wama Shakti Vahini, another NGO run by Brajesh Thakur, are still traceless. A case was recently lodged over it on the statement of Devesh Kumar Sharma, assistant director of the child protection unit.

"Efforts are on to trace the whereabouts of the missing inmates of the shelter home," said Muzaffarpur deputy superintendent of police Mukul Ranjan.

CBI probe

The CBI, which is investigating the Muzaffarpur shelter home case, will quiz over a dozen officials of the social welfare department, The Telegraph has learnt. On Thursday, a CBI team had met the principal secretary of the social welfare department and sought some files.

The agency is also likely to quiz officials of the health and information and public relations departments. The health department had released funds to the Swadhar Grih, and the information and public department gave advertisements to the newspapers run by Brajesh Thakur.

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