Bihar shelter home girls may have been sedated before being raped every night: Police

After being given the tablets daily, the girls would soon go off to sleep after which their ordeal would begin. They would often wake up with abdominal or vaginal pain, said investigators.

Investigators believe girls at the Muzaffarpur shelter home were allegedly given sedatives under the garb of deworming tablets almost every night before being sexually exploited.

Political parties protest against the Bihar shelter home case during the ongoing Monsoon Session at the Bihar Assembly in Patna on July 24, 2018. (PTI)

The inference is based on the revelation made by most of the 29 girls, examined by a medical board at the Patna Medical College Hospital (PMCH).

The girls, during the course of sharing their clinical history with doctors, told them that ‘didis’ (women managing the shelter home) used to give ‘deworming tablets’ every night after dinner.

Investigators have reasons to believe that these medicines were not Albendazole, the most common medication for treatment of a variety of parasitic worm infestations, but sedatives.

For, girls at the shelter home said they would soon go off to sleep after which their ordeal would begin. They would often wake up with abdominal or vaginal pain, said investigators.

The doctors, however, did not comment on the medicine, as the girls did not know the proprietary or generic name of the medicine given to them.

However, responding to HT’s query about deworming protocol, experts said, “The tablet has to be consumed once and may be repeated either after a week or a month, depending upon the intensity of worm infestation. In no case are deworming tablets to be consumed daily.”

Doctors refrained from commenting on the side effects of regular consumption of deworming tablets or sedatives as they were not aware about the medicine given to the girls.

Investigators suggested that 34 of the 42 girls examined so far were found to have been sexually exploited. Two other girls were not subjected to medical examination because of their poor mental health.

“Of the 29 girls examined in three batches at the PMCH, doctors had found possibility of sexual contact in 21 girls, while test reports of all 13 examined at the district hospital, Madhubani, were positive. Medical test reports of eight girls were negative,” said senior superintendent of police, Muzaffarpur, Harpreet Kaur.

The CBI team had reached Muzaffarpur on Sunday afternoon to take over investigation of the case. The Bihar government had recommended for a CBI probe into the case on July 26.

“Some girls were found to have laxity of vaginal introitus,” the medical report said. “This refers to loosening of vaginal opening, which may happen when a woman has sexual contact. It can also manifest in athletes, cyclists, those into equestrian or horse-riding or when young women use tampons during their menstrual cycle. Besides, it can also be due to congenital weakening of vaginal tissue,” said experts, who were privy to the medical report, on condition of anonymity.

The doctors found no injury marks on the external genitalia of the girls, even as old injury marks were found on their forehands, which the girls claimed was self-inflicted out of anger.

PMCH medical superintendent Dr Rajiv Ranjan Prasad refused to share the medical findings, saying: “The matter is sub-judice.”

A Muzaffarpur court had ordered constitution of the medical board to examine the girls. The exposé followed an independent social audit report by the Tata Institute of Social Sciences of 110 shelter homes in the state.