Four minor girls were found missing on Sunday from a shelter home in Patna. A case has been registered at the Patliputra police station.
According to the police, four girls, aged between 12 and 16, are said to have escaped from the Asha Kiran shelter home, located inside a school campus in Patliputra Colony on Sunday morning. The State Welfare Department runs the home which is managed by an NGO. The girls, living on the second floor of the shelter home, are said to have escaped from a window using a dupatta (stole) as rope and jumped over the boundary wall.
The police have registered a case and begun searching for the missing minors. “We searched for the girls at railway stations, bus station and other prominent locations but they’re yet to be found,” said Patliputra police station in-charge T.N. Tiwari.
The official in-charge of the shelter home did not respond to questions on the incident.
The rape and sexual exploitation of 34 girls at another Bihar shelter home in Muzaffarpur was exposed earlier this year in a report by the Tata Institute of Social Sciences. Over a dozen persons, including the main accused Brajesh Thakur, were later arrested.
The Supreme Court is monitoring the case. Following a court order, Brajesh was recently shifted to Patiala jail in Punjab as the CBI said he could have “influenced” the case by being in Muzaffarpur jail.
The then Social Welfare Minister Manju Verma had to step down from her post after her husband’s name cropped up in the case.
Meanwhile, the municipal commissioner has ordered demolition of illegal constructions at the Muzaffarpur shelter home.