₹5 lakh reward for info that helps find missing Bihar girl: CBI

The Patna high court ordered a CBI probe into the disappearance of the young girl on a petition by her father

PATNA: The Central Bureau of Investigation has announced a ₹5 lakh reward for information about a seven-year-old girl who disappeared from Bihar’s Muzaffarpur on February 16, 2021.

CBI registered the kidnapping case on December 22, 2022 (AFP File Photo)

CBI registered the kidnapping case on December 22, 2022, following a direction by the Patna high court on a petition by the young girl’s father who complained that the state police weren’t investigating his daughter’s disappearance. Khushi Kumari was five years old when she went missing from a Saraswati puja pandal built near her house where she was playing. The high court eventually appeared to agree with the father.

In its order, the high court recorded that the case diary produced before the bench only had entries up to April 8, 2021, “which is a pointer to the fact that the Investigating Officer was in fact sleeping over the matter for more than one year prior to the hearing of the present case which took place for the first time on May 5, 2022 and an unfortunate father, as the petitioner claims himself, kept running from pillar to post for conduct of speedy investigation, the directions of the supervising authority were not carried out properly and in time”.