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Muzaffarpur shelter home case: Begusarai court remands ex-minister Manju Verma in one-day police custody
Former JDU minister Kumari Manju Verma was remanded in connection with recovery of ammunitions from one of her houses during a CBI raid in Muzaffarpur shelter home sex scandal case.
A Begusarai court on Wednesday remanded former minister and Janata Dal (United) MLA Kumari Manju Verma in one-day police custody in connection with recovery of ammunitions from one of her houses during a CBI raid in Muzaffarpur shelter home sex scandal case.
Additional chief judicial magistrate, Majhaul subdivision, Prabhat Trivedi, passed the order on an application by the Begusarai police which had sought two-day custody of Verma.
Her lawyer Satyanarayan Mahto had opposed the police petition for two-day remand on health ground.
The court ordered that Verma would be taken on remand only if she was found to be medically fit. It directed Begusarai jail superintendent Brajesh Singh Mehta to send Verma to police custody if the medical report found her fit.
Verma had surrendered before the Majhaul court on Tuesday, weeks after evading arrest which drew the ire of the Supreme Court and led to her being proclaimed as an absconder and attachment of her property.
The former minister and her husband Chandrashekhar Verma have been named in an Arms Act case lodged at Cheria Bariarpur police station in Begusarai district on August 18 after a huge quantity of ammunitions was found in their house during a CBI raid in connection with the shelter home sex scandal.
Verma had stepped down as social welfare minister following allegations about her husband’s links with Brajesh Thakur, the prime accused in the Muzaffarpur case.
At least 34 girls, aged 7 to 14 years, were allegedly drugged, scalded with boiling water, raped and forced to sleep naked at a state-funded shelter home run by Thakur’s NGO. The shocking case of sexual exploitation was first highlighted in an audit report submitted by the Tata Institute of Social Sciences to the state’s social welfare department in April.
Meanwhile, a Begusarai jail official, requesting anonymity, said the former minister spent sleepless nights on Tuesday and Wednesday inside the general women’s ward where she had been kept.
