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Move Muzaffarpur shelter home case accused Brajesh Thakur to Patiala jail, orders SC
Muzaffarpur shelter home case: The top court also questioned the Bihar government why former minister Manju Verma has not been arrested and sought a status report from the state police and CBI on Verma’s arrest.
The Supreme Court on Tuesday ordered the transfer of Brajesh Thakur, the prime accused in the Muzaffarpur shelter home sex scandal case, to a high-security jail in Punjab’s Patiala.
The shocking details of the status report of the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) in the Muzaffarpur shelter home scandal prompted the court last week to consider transferring Thakur’s custody out of Bihar.
The top court also questioned the Bihar government why former minister Manju Verma has not been arrested and sought a status report from the state police and CBI on Verma’s arrest.
“Just because she happens to be cabinet minister doesn’t make her above the law. The whole thing is highly suspicious. Why has she not been arrested? It’s too much. Nobody is bothered about the law,” the court said.
Manju Verma, the former social welfare minister, had to resign in August following reports which alleged that her husband had close links with Thakur.
A case was registered against her husband Chandrashekhar Verma a few weeks after his wife’s resignation. It had come to light that he had allegedly spoken to Thakur several times between January and June this year.
Chandrashekhar Verma surrendered before a court in Bihar’s Begusarai Monday, officials said. He surrendered before the Manjhaul sub-divisional court where Judicial Magistrate Yogesh Kumar Mishra remanded him in judicial custody till November 6, reported PTI.
The court also expressed shock after being informed that the girls in the shelter home were given drugs. “These girls are being injected with drugs so that they can be raped. What is this going on?” it asked.
Over 30 girls were allegedly raped at the shelter home run by Thakur, the chief of a state-funded NGO. The alleged sexual exploitation was first highlighted in an audit report submitted by the Tata Institute of Social Sciences to the state’s social welfare department.
Seventeen people, including Thakur, have been arrested in the case, now being probed by the CBI and the agency is on a lookout for five more.
