CHANDIGARH: A special
CBI court in
Panchkula on Wednesday convicted nine people for their involvement in sexual exploitation of destitute girls at Rohtak’s Apna Ghar shelter home in 2012.
Those convicted included
Jaswanti Devi, the woman who ran the home. The sentence would be announced on April 24. The Apna Ghar case was one of the most disturbing instances of sexual exploitation in the country where both women and minor girls were not only raped inside the NGO-run shelter home but were also videotaped and photographed by perpetrators.
Investigations had revealed that some girls were even forced into prostitution. It was only after the Apna Ghar controversy rocked the country that state commissions for protection of child rights were constituted in Punjab,
Haryana and Chandigarh. A four-member team appointed by
Punjab and Haryana high court had interviewed 28 inmates.
It was revealed that the “caretaker of the shelter used to drug the mentally challenged girl inmates before producing them for sexual exploitation and a large number of police personnel were regular visitors in the home”.