The Supreme Court on Thursday took suo motu cognisance of the alleged rape of minor girls in a shelter home in Bihar's Muzaffarpur and restrained media from showing images (blurred and morphed) of minor rape victims.
A bench of Justices M B Lokur and Deepak Gupta took cognizance of the matter and expressed concern that the alleged victims of sexual assault at the shelter home were subjected to media interviews again and again.
The bench, which issued notices to the Bihar government and the Centre, also restrained the electronic media from telecasting images of the alleged victims even in a morphed form.
The court issued a notice to Bihar government and the Centre and sought a detailed reply from them. news agency ANI reported.
As many as 34 girls were sedated, tortured, burned and sexually abused by administration and visitors at a shelter home in Muzaffarpur, Bihar. The case came to light in a social audit report by the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai.
The shelter home was sealed in June this year when an FIR was lodged in the light of a social audit report which suggested that inmates were being sexually exploited. 10 of the 11 accused have been arrested so far.
"At the shelter home they were denied food and clothes and were beaten with shoes,” Dilmani Mishra, state women commission chairperson quoted as saying.
According to earlier reports, a former inmate of the shelter home had also alleged that a co-resident was beaten to death and buried in the premises when she resisted sexual exploitation, and several other girls were raped, prompting the Bihar police to dig up the courtyard to look for the body. The excavation has been stopped and the pit has been filled up.
Chief minister Nitish Kumar, on Friday, recommended a CBI probe into the matter after growing outrage against the state government by the opposition.
Kumar's deputy Sushil Kumar Modi said the state government would request the Patna High Court to monitor the probe.
Opposition MLAs had paralysed the state Assembly for three days with their vociferous demands for a high court-monitored CBI probe into the scandal. They also demanded that the state Social Welfare Minister Manju Verma be sacked.
(With inputs from agencies)
