The Supreme Court on Tuesday gave Centre a week’s time to report on the conditions prevailing in shelter homes across the country after the incidents of sexual abuse and rape of girls in shelter homes situated in Bihar and Uttar Pradesh led the Court to observe that girls in this country are being raped left, right and centre.
Taking up the matter relating to Muzaffarpur’s shelter home where 34 out of 42 girls were raped and sexually abused, the bench of Justices Madan B lokur, Deepak Gupta and KM Joseph said, “We are concerned with the larger issue of protection of children, particularly girls, staying in the shelter homes.”
The National Commission for Protection of Child Rights (NCPCR), which is the agency responsible for protecting the rights of children, informed the Court that a study was commissioned early last year to enquire into 3800 odd institutions running shelter homes for children. The purpose was to verify registration of these homes, check on their infrastructure, staff, and other facilities. Additional Solicitor General (ASG) Pinky Anand stated that the report was still being compiled.
The bench directed the Centre and NCPCR to produce whatever information that was available by the next date. It even summoned the report prepared by the Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS) that conducted a social audit on all shelter homes in Bihar that exposed the state of affairs in 110 shelter homes, with 15 being flagged as requiring grave attention.
The report was commissioned by the Bihar government and following the audit, the state filed FIRs against persons running nine shelter homes, including the home at Muzaffarpur, where sexual abuse of girls was repreated.
Incidentally, the shelter homes that were a den of evil activities was run by NGOs funded by the state government. “Why did the state allow this to happenij It is not any private individual bit state-financed institutions.
People pay taxes and their money is going into funding these kind of activities. Do you release funds to these NGOs without knowing what their credentials are or what work they doij” TISS agreed to share the report with the Court as it has not been made public yet.
What worried the bench was the larger picture. As per the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) 38947 reported rapes occurred in the country in 2016. “This indicates four girls are raped every day with a single rape occurring every six hours. There are reports we read that girls are being sold along Delhi-Mumbai Highway.