Govt took over a month to lodge Muzaffarpur home case

PATNA: The state social welfare department took more than one month to discuss and decide to lodge an FIR on May 31 against the owner and other office-bearers of NGO Seva Sankalp Ewam Vikas Samiti, which was running the government’s Muzaffarpur children home where at least 29 inmates were raped over a period of time.

Social welfare department principal secretary Atul Prasad on Tuesday defended the delay despite receiving the Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS, Mumbai) social audit report in April mentioning the sexual and physical abuse of minor girls at the children home.

Addressing a presser with DGP K S Dwivedi, Atul accepted the department had received the TISS report in April itself. When asked that the inordinate delay in lodging the FIR might have helped the accused destroy the evidence, Atul bizarrely said the department had been discussing the matter with TISS officials during that period to decide the legal course of action in the case. “We did not want the report to be leaked as it could have benefited the accused in the case,” he said.

Atul also said the department had conducted an internal workshop of its officials concerned on the issue on May 26. When asked why no CCTV camera was installed at the Muzaffarpur children home and other such places despite the department’s field officials writing about it almost two years ago, Atul said CCTV cameras would now be installed at all such places.

When asked if the system to monitor such homes had collapsed, Atul said it was the department which had decided to conduct an audit of such homes in June last year.

DGP Dwivedi also said the government would now conduct periodical inspection of all such government homes, especially where children live, with the help of TISS and UNICEF.