Bihar's horror home: CBI makes little headway | India Today Insight

In October 2018, armed with a backhoe loader, a team of CBI sleuths reached a cremation site at Sikandarpur in Bihar's Muzaffarpur district, around one and a half km from the infamous government-sponsored shelter home, Balika Grih. Brajesh Thakur, the owner of the shelter home, is accused of raping and sexually abusing several underage inmates, and of even murdering a few.

Little Headway

• Seven months have passed since the CBI took over the investigation, but they have still not even identified all the accused in the shelter home rapes
• By restricting their probe to just the criminal aspects, the CBI appears to have left the social welfare department mandarins, who might have helped chief accused Brajesh Thakur bag lucrative contracts, off the hook.
• The latest CBI revelation about 11 missing girls has raised more questions. Who are these girls? Is there any record of them in the social welfare department files?
• The Supreme Court, by asking the income tax department to probe Thakur’s assets, has already indicated that no one should be spared

They dug up the ground and recovered parts of human skulls and bones, which was taken away for forensic investigation. That was seven months back, but since then there has been little news. Finally, on May 3, 2019, the CBI informed the Supreme Court that 11 girls were missing from the shelter home and are feared murdered. These names have come from the other victims, but beyond this, not much is known about the missing girls.

The government-funded Balika Grih for destitute girls was a horror house. Of the 42 girls housed there, medical examination confirmed sexual assault on 34. The state government had outsourced the guardian's job to Thakur's NGOs, although it had questionable credentials in 2013. The rape and sexual abuse continued till May 31 when the girls were shifted out to other shelters.

Beginning July 2018, when the CBI took up the Muzaffarpur shelter home case, the agency has charge-sheeted 21 accused including Thakur. But the progress of the investigation has left a lot to be desired. "The latest revelation of the 11 missing girls speaks volumes about the CBI's failure," says lawyer K.D. Mishra, who initially filed the PIL in Patna High Court in the case. Mishra alleges the CBI has been soft on the Bihar welfare department mandarins from the beginning.

"They have apparently restricted the investigation to the acts of sexual exploitation and those who committed it. This means the CBI has clearly ignored significant leads about those who might have helped Thakur get the welfare department's contract to run the shelter home. The principal secretary and the director in the social welfare department, both IAS officers, may have helped Thakur bag the lucrative contracts. Their role must be investigated." Also, the CBI mentions that 35 girls were found with identical or similar names in the master register of the shelter home. It is not known if they have crosschecked it with parallel records maintained at the state welfare department.

The Supreme Court has already questioned how Thakur received Rs 4.5 crore from the Bihar government to finance the activities of his NGO. That Thakur had friends in the social welfare department is evident. Indeed, even as the shelter home case was breaking, the department in May 2018 awarded his NGO yet another contract to run a shelter home for beggars in Patna. This was in complete disregard of the report from Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS) submitted to the department in April 2018, pointing out the rampant sexual abuse at the home. The social welfare department hastily cancelled the new contract only after Thakur was arrested on June 3.

Incidentally, TISS had inspected 110 government funded shelter homes in Bihar in 2018. Examples of abuse and violence, in varying degree and form, were found in almost all the shelter homes in the state.

Earlier in March 2019, social activist Nivedita Jha, on whose plea the Supreme Court had started monitoring the investigation, had alleged that the CBI was deliberately diluting the case by excluding crucial leads. Jha had pointed out that while the victims had described two of the assaulters as "tondwale uncle netaji" (uncle with paunch, a neta) and "moochwale uncleji" (uncle with moustache), the CBI has not identified them so far. "Clearly, while there is ample evidence pointing to a large-scale prostitution racket run by Thakur, the CBI has just wiped the slate clean," says Mishra.

"Has the CBI prepared sketches based on the physical description of the perpetrators? Have they recorded who sanctioned the shelter home contract to Thakur and why? On the face of it, it looks more than just an oversight," the lawyer adds.

Though a separate and unconnected development, the deaths of three inmates at a Patna Shelter home in August 2018 once again pointed out to how the social welfare department in Bihar continues to work with impunity. Manisha Dayal, a former model-turned-event manager and socialite known more for her proximity to politicians and bureaucrats than any social work was given the "lucrative job" of running the shelter home for 75 mentally ill women in the state capital.

Sources in the state secretariat told India Today that profits from running a shelter home was huge, and accountability almost zero. "All of them have their hands in the till, including junior officials tasked with monitoring these homes. In fact, so lucrative is the business that many power brokers and influential middlemen have their fingers in the shelter home pie," says a government official who preferred to stay anonymous.

The state social welfare department has assigned voluntary organizations to run hundred-odd shelter homes for homeless men and women at various locations. Apart from the perfunctory ground reports, everything, from screening of NGOs to awarding them the projects, is done in a highly centralised manner, making the process vulnerable to thumb

rules. "The Muzaffarpur rapes are just the tip of the iceberg," says Parveen Amanullah, a former social welfare department minister, hinting that the malaise is spread all through the department.

The Beast and his network

Currently cooling his heels in Patiala jail, Brajesh Thakur was known as a fixer and racketeer, someone who masqueraded as a journalist (he owned three newspapers with dubious circulation) who the bureaucrats and politicians found useful.

Thakur was part caste lord, part contractor and part political profiteer, all rolled into one. A man who milked the system to the fullest and operated with impunity, as a newspaper owner he earned crores over the years from government advertisements. He also made money by bagging projects from the state health department and social welfare department as the owner of a few NGOs. The newspapers fraudulently showed circulation figures (as high as 62,000) to get advertisements from the state and central governments. Indeed, such was his clout that he was also made a member of the press accreditation committee, which screens accreditation applications of journalists.

Known for his proximity to murder convict and politician Anand Mohan, founder of the erstwhile Bihar People's Party, Thakur had twice unsuccessfully contested the assembly election from the Kudhani seat in Muzaffarpur district. He first contested in 1995 as a BPP candidate and then in 2000, when the BPP was part of the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA). In 2005, the BJP left the seat for the JD(U) and Thakur had to abandon his political dreams.

Undeterred, Thakur fielded his son Rahul in a panchayat samiti election in the constituency in 2016, but he too lost. Of late, he had once again started preparing to contest the 2020 assembly poll from Kudhani, the constituency he has been nurturing where his father, the late Radha Mohan Thakur, had done some development work through an NGO.

Having twice lost elections, Brajesh temporarily shelved his political dreams and got into social service, focussing on bagging contracts from various government departments through the Seva Sankalp Evam Vikas Samiti.

In November 2013, Brajesh started running the social welfare department funded Balika Grih. He ran the shelter in his own building, adjacent to his residence on Sahu Road in Muzaffarpur. He also ran a Swadhar Grih, another shelter home for destitute women. According to documents seized by the police, 471 girls had stayed there at some point of which four ran away and three died.

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