Supreme Court to CBI: Complete Bihar shelter probe in a month

NEW DELHI: Taking cognisance of CBI's affidavit that 11 missing girls of Muzaffarpur shelter home may have been killed, the Supreme Court on Monday directed the agency to complete investigations within a month and file a status report by June 3.
Observing that the case needed to be heard on an urgent basis, a bench of Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi and Justice Deepak Gupta posted the case for hearing during vacation on June 3. "In the meantime, the ongoing investigation, as stated in the reply of the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), be completed and all necessary actions in accordance with law, including filing of status report before this court, be also completed," the bench said.
In an affidavit, CBI said rape survivors spoke of the girls who were said to be have been killed by main accused Brajesh Thakur. The agency said it is verifying the allegations and divulged that it had excavated a bundle of bones from a location where a girl was apparently buried by the accused. It said it had not invoked murder charges against Thakur as investigation is in progress.
Attorney General KK Venugopal, appearing for CBI, told the bench that the agency is scrutinising details in the shelter home records where it found 35 girls with identical or similar names, who at one time or the other were at the 'Balikagrih'. He, however, said it might not be possible to complete the investigations by June 3.