Muzzafarpur shelter home rapes: CBI to carry out forensic examination

New Delhi, Aug 2: The CBI will soon be conducting an exhaustive forensic examination of the Muzzafarpur shelter home where minor girls were allegedly raped by officials of the centre, officials said.

They said a team from CFSL will soon be sent to Muzzafarpur to reconstruct crime scenes and collect forensic samples from the centre.

The statements of the victims will be used to reconstruct the crime scene and develop a timeline which will be used to prosecute the accused, they said.

The agency may also take help child psychologists to record the statements of the girls, some of them as young as seven years, the officials said.

Over 30 girls were allegedly raped at the centre run by one Brajesh Thakur, chief of the state-funded NGO.

The agency will also record statements of doctors and forensic specialists, used by the local police during its probe, and collect evidence from them, they said.

The alleged sexual exploitation of the girls was first highlighted in an audit report submitted by the Tata Institute of Social Science (TISS), Mumbai, to the state's Social Welfare Department in April.

An FIR was lodged on May 31 against 11 people, including Brajesh Thakur, the owner of the NGO which ran the government-funded shelter home for destitute girls. The probe has now been taken over by the CBI.

In all, sexual abuse of 34 inmates out of 42 was confirmed in their medical examination while two others who were unwell were yet to undergo medical tests.

The TISS audit report stated that many girls at the shelter home had complained of sexual abuse. A special investigation team was formed to probe the complaints.

The NGO running the shelter home in Muzaffarpur was blacklisted and the girls were shifted to shelter homes in Patna and Madhubani.

Women staff members of the shelter home and Brajesh Thakur, who ran the NGO, were among those who were arrested by the local police in connection with the case.

During the probe by local police, two types of epilepsy injection were recovered from the centre. If administered to a healthy person, these injections would render him unconscious.

It was apprehended that this injection might have been used on the inmates to sexually abuse them, the sources from local agencies had said.