Maneka Gandhi: Government working on direct monitoring of shelter homes

NEW DELHI: Expressing concern over the recent case of escape from a shelter home in Patna district involving seven girls including those rescued from a life of abuse at the shelter home in Muzaffarpur last year, minister for women and child development Maneka Gandhi said the only way out of the problem is that the ministry establish a direct monitoring system of homes which it has been working on. She shared that the ministry had alerted the state authorities that all was not well at the Muzaffarpur home many months before the case of horrific abuse came to light but no action clearly happened.

TOI reported on February 23 from Patna that four of the teen girls who were moved to a government-funded shelter home in Patna district, when rescued last May from a life of abuse and violence in a Muzaffarpur shelter home, broke thin window-bars to escape with three others from their new ‘home’ around 3am on Saturday. All seven girls were later traced and rescued.

“We have moved beyond warning alerts to states and raising an alarm,” she said pointing that Centre through the ministry and NCPCR has been increasingly intervening in the running of shelters for women and children directly. Gandhi cited measures like inspections, surveys and mapping exercises undertaken to establish the examct number of homes and their occupants and the nature of problems that need to be addressed.

The escape also invited the charge that the state has not provided enough security to the girls, key witnesses in the Supreme Court-monitored investigation into the high-profile case. The four girls in Saturday’s escape bid had recorded their statements against Muzaffarpur shelter home case prime accused Brajesh Thakur among others. Thakur is in Patiala jail. On February 7, the Supreme Court had transferred the case from a Bihar court to Delhi, which would now conclude the trial within six months.

The horrors at the Muzaffarpur home came to light in a report last May by Tata Institute of Social Sciences that found that most of the 41 girls in the Muzaffarpur were sexually assaulted and abused at the NGO-run shelter home. They were then shifted to a home in Mokama.