The top court’s observations came during a hearing on the alleged sexual abuse of 34 minors and women at a Muzaffarpur shelter.
New Delhi: The Bihar government received a searing rebuke from the Supreme Court Tuesday on the alleged sexual abuse of 34 minors and women at a Muzaffarpur shelter, with a bench questioning the grant of financial aid to NGOs “without inspection”.
The sexual abuse at the shelter, which received funds from the Bihar government and was run by a local NGO, came to light after the Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS) conducted an audit of 110 shelters financed by the state.
“This means that the state financed these activities in a sense,” the bench comprising Justices Madan B. Lokur, Deepak Gupta and K.M. Joseph said. “Is there so much money to go around that it is being distributed to NGOs without inspection?
“Every six hours a girl is getting raped. What are you doing about it?” Justice Lokur said, quoting statistics from the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB).
“Girls are getting raped left, right and centre. We checked NCRB data. 38,947 girls were raped in 2016,” Lokur added, “And these are reported statistics.”
“It appears that girls are being sold in Madhya Pradesh and (on) the Delhi-Bombay highway. Madhya Pradesh is leading the statistics with the most number of rapes, with Uttar Pradesh coming in second in the country,” Justice Lokur said.
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The Supreme Court took cognisance of the allegations of mass sexual abuse at the Muzaffarpur shelter on 2 August after a Patna-based activist Ranvijay wrote to Justice Lokur, who is also the chairperson of the court’s Juvenile Justice Committee.
Dated 31 July, the letter sought the court’s intervention and help in protecting the victims from further trauma.
When the top court asked about the contents of the TISS report, Bihar said it was yet to be submitted in court. The bench then asked why the report was being kept a “secret”.
Advocate Aparna Bhatt, the amicus curiae, said one of the girls was still missing. The Child Welfare Committee is the point of contact, but, in this case the member is absconding from police, she added. “A member of the district child protection unit has also been arrested for his involvement,” Bhatt said.
Senior advocate Vrinda Grover raised a far more serious concern when she said that TISS had altogether flagged 15 shelters in the audit. “Only the Muzzafarpur tragedy has been reported in the media, we do not know the situation about the others,” she said.
At this point, senior advocate Ranjit Kumar, representing Bihar, said the state government had taken action against the institutions named in the report.
“There were nine institutions that were flagged on concerns of sexual abuse,” he added, saying action had been initiated against erring officials and nine FIRs registered.
Several issues pertaining to the welfare of the girls rescued from the shelter were taken up at the hearing, which lasted well over an hour. The bench took cognisance of the suggestions offered by Grover and Bhatt, besides taking note of the state’s initiatives towards the rehabilitation of the girls.
The court, however, slammed Delhi Commission for Women (DCW) chair Swati Maliwal for her plea seeking to intervene in the matter. Telling her not to “politicise the issue”, the court added, “You have no locus here, Delhi has no business in this.”
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