On Tuesday, the warden, Ramesh Maurya, and chief warden, Surendra Singh Chauhan, of Arya Orphanage were released on bail. The two had been arrested on Saturday for ignoring the complaint of the mother of a 10-year-old sodomy victim of the orphanage. An orphanage spokesperson said the two have
already been suspended.
The guard Navrattan, who has been arrested for raping an 11-year-old resident, however, continues to be in jail.
Meanwhile, the Delhi government has decided to conduct a medical examination of those children who had complained about being sexually abused first. This move comes when the government has barely a day left to submit a report to the high court over the alleged sexual abuse in the orphanage, The Child Welfare Committee will be getting in touch with the Delhi Police to get the names of all those children. “Due to holidays in this week, we have not been able to start the medical examination. We will be starting the medical examination from tomorrow,” said Sushma Vij, chairperson of Child Welfare Committee, Mayur Vihar.
CWC members and the government appointed administrator will discuss the issue in a meeting on Tuesday.
To strengthen their case Delhi Police have also decided to include statements of more children in the chargesheet. “We will go to the orphanage on Tuesday with the counsellors to convince other children to record their statements. A number of them are now very scared and don’t want to say anything” said a senior police official.
One of the girls, who had given her statement to the police, has also been shifted out of the orphanage.
Meanwhile, Delhi Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit on Monday ordered an inquiry into the case asked officials to go “deep down” to issues being faced by inmates to prevent their recurrence.
An 11-year-old girl, a resident of the Arya orphanage, had died on December 24 after being raped over a period of time.