Patna: Six of the seven minor girls who escaped from a care unit at Mokama town in rural Patna in the early hours of Saturday following, were found in Darbhanga district late in the evening, police said Sunday.
Darbhanga senior SP Babu Ram said, “Six of the minor girls were found in Gangauli village under the Sakatpur police station area late in the evening (Saturday).”
He informed a police team had come from Patna district in search of the missing girls based on the inputs they had gathered during investigation. One of the girls belonged to Gangauli village. She was present in the village along with five others, all of whom were taken into custody.
Earlier opposition parties flayed the NDA government in Bihar, alleging that five of the girls were ‘witnesses’ in the sex scandal being probed by the CBI under the supervision of the Supreme Court, and claimed their escape was a ‘conspiracy’ hatched by the ruling dispensation to protect ‘big shots’.
“Seven girls have escaped from the shelter home. They are said to have fled after cutting the grill of a window at about 3am. They were under treatment for their violent behaviour,” Social Welfare Department director Raj Kumar had earlier informed this agency. It is yet to be ascertained whether the girls include former inmates of the Muzaffarpur ‘Balika Grih’, he had then said.
Sniffer dogs and forensic experts were pressed into service to trace the girls who had fled the home situated around 100 km from the state capital.
Meanwhile, leader of the opposition in the Bihar Assembly Tejashwi Yadav tweeted: “Five witnesses of the Muzaffarpur rape case have been made to disappear from Mokama shelter home to protect the Chief Minister and the government machinery.”
Tejashwi’s mother Rabri Devi, who is leader of the opposition in the Legislative Council, said, “Chief Minister Nitish Kumar should tell us why he is so scared.”
The girls went missing a few hours before hearing in the Muzaffarpur case commenced at a Delhi court, where trial was transferred from the north Bihar town following a Supreme Court order earlier this month.
The Muzaffarpur sex scandal had come to light in May last year after an FIR was lodged by the Social Welfare Department based on the social audit report of Mumbai-based Tata Institute of Social Sciences.
More than 30 girls were lodged at the shelter home when the scandal came to light and medical examinations confirmed that most of them had been subjected to sexual abuse. The shelter home was subsequently sealed and its inmates were moved to care units in Madhubani, Patna and Mokama.
PTI
