How girls who escaped from Bihar shelter were found

The Bihar police have recovered six out of seven girls who escaped unchallenged from the shelter home in Mokama on Saturday. Out of these seven girls, five of them are witnesses in the infamous Muzaffarpur shelter home case in which trial will begin in a Delhi court on Monday.

The six girls were found in Bihar’s Darbhanga district while the police have left for West Bengal to trace the seventh girl who fled to Dinajpur in the neighbouring State.

These girls, in the age group of 16 and 22, are mostly abandoned children, victims of child trafficking, orphans, street and slum children. They were shifted from Muzaffarpur shelter home to Mokama last year following a report submitted by Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS) which said that they were sexually exploited by the owner and others.

The owner of the Muzaffarpur shelter home, Brajesh Thakur, who is the prime accused, is currently lodged in Delhi’s Tihar jail on the directive of the apex court. The court had earlier reprimanded the CBI for transferring the investigating officer in the shelter home case.

How They Fled

After several girls from Muzaffarpur were shifted to Mokama (for counselling and better care), the total inmates in Mokama shelter home stood at 57. However, these seven girls stayed together before they reportedly cut the window grill of the bathroom and escaped at around 3 am on Saturday.

The shelter home, run by Nazareth Academy, is quite far off from the main town.

“The girls walked barefoot to reach Mokama railway station, from where they boarded a local train for Darbhanga. We got the CCTV footage at Mokama and then again at Barauni junction where the girls had got down from the train for a while,” the police source told Deccan Herald here on Sunday.

On Saturday evening, the Patna police forwarded the footage to the railway police, who, in turn, alerted the Darbhanga police. Late in the evening, the Senior SP (SSP) of Darbhanga, Babu Ram got information that the girls were seen at Sakatpur area in the district. The police conducted raids and recovered six of the seven missing girls. “A separate team was sent to Bengal to locate the seventh girl,” the source added.