New Delhi: Former Bihar minister, the JD(U)’s Manju Varma, who had to resign over Muzaffarpur shelter home rape case, is trailing against RJD’s Raj Vanshi Mahto, a former MP, at Cheria Bariarpur seat in Begusarai.
As of 12.45 pm, Varma was trailing by over 8,638 votes, according to the Election Commission website.
She was twice elected from the same seat in 2010 and 2015, in which her caste — Kushwaha — dominates. A former Bihar social welfare minister, Varma lost her post after the Muzaffarpur shelter home sexual exploitation case — in which 34 girls were allegedly exploited — came to light in 2018.
Her husband Chandrashekhar Varma was allegedly a frequent visitor to the shelter home, which was funded by her department and was run by Brajesh Thakur, owner of a local vernacular newspaper. The CBI probed the case and a Delhi court convicted the guilty in February this year but Manju and her husband weren’t mentioned in the charge sheet.
Manju Varma, however, has served a jail time of six months but not for the Muzaffarpur shelter home case but because a SIT formed by the Bihar government had found 50 bullets at her home in Cheriya Bariyarpur. Both Manju and Chandrashekhar were booked under the Arms Act.
‘I should have been given credit for exposing the scandal’
At that time, Manju had complained that both Chief Minister Nitish Kumar and her party — the Janata Dal (United) — had not supported her. She had also defended her husband in the Muzaffarpur shelter home case.
“I should have been given credit for exposing the scandal,” she had said. “I, as a minister of the department, ordered the social audit of shelter homes and the report exposed the scandal. I personally visited the shelter home once, and at that time, everything looked okay.”
Manju, who was suspended from primary membership of the party, had disappeared after she was granted bail in 2019. She resurfaced only when Nitish Kumar was meeting with probable candidates for the assembly polls.
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