Bihar: Oppn disrupts House over govt failure on law, order

Patna: The Opposition parties on Wednesday disrupted the proceedings of both the Houses of the state legislature. RJD leaders said that the Opposition parties would continue to raise the issue inside the state Assembly “till CM Nitish Kumar comes out with a valid reply on the state government’s failure in controlling law and order situation and shelter home sexual abuse case”.

The situation inside the House later prompted the acting chairman of the legislative council, Haroon Rashid, to suspend five RJD MLCs. Reacting against the action, former Bihar CM Rabri Devi along with other Opposition leaders sat on a dharna in the Well of the House demanding withdrawal of suspension orders against her party MLCs.

“It seems that the state is at the mercy of God. The situation has become so bad that the Supreme Court had to pull the state government on issues like law and order and its failure in the shelter home sexual abuse case,” Opposition leader Rabri Devi said.

Earlier in the day, the Supreme Court had directed the CBI to take over all cases related to sexual abuse at shelter homes in Bihar. On Tuesday, the top court had slammed the Nitish Kumar-led government for its soft approach in filing cases against the accused.

Besides Muzaffarpur, the CBI will now be probing incidents of sexual abuse in 16 more shelter homes of the state. Muzaffarpur was among the 110 shelter homes where more than 34 minor girls were subjected to extreme brutality and raped by officials and employees of the facility.

The details of torture and sexual abuse of minor girls between 7 to 17 years at the Muzaffarpur shelter home was mentioned in the audit report of Mumbai based Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS).

The report was handed over to the social welfare department in March but FIR in connection with the case was registered on May 31. Eleven persons including Brajesh Thakur, the administrator of the NGO that was in agreement with the social welfare department to run the Muzaffarpur shelter home was arrested in connection with the case.

The case was handed over to the CBI in July after opposition parties started blaming NDA leaders of interfering into the police probe to save “influential people” involved in the case.

Speaking on the issue RJD leader Tejashwi Yadav said, “Everything is out in the open now. Innocent children were subjected to brutality in the state-run shelter homes of Bihar but the state government instead of initiating strict action has been trying to save people involved in the case.”