NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court on Friday expressed serious concern over the recent cases of rape and sexual abuse of women at shelter homes in Bihar and Uttar Pradesh.
"Tell us what is this?" a bench of Justices Madan B Lokur, S Abdul Nazeer and Deepak Gupta said, referring to the recent incident at Pratapgarh in Uttar Pradesh where 26 women have been reported to be missing from two shelter homes.
"Yesterday, I read so many women have been raped in Pratapgarh. How will these things stop?" Justice Lokur asked. "When it is going to stop?"
Besides Pratapgarh, rape and sexual abuse of women and girls at shelter homes run by NGOs have also surfaced recently at Muzaffarpur in Bihar and at Deoria in Uttar Pradesh.
Advocate Aparna Bhat, assisting the court as amicus curiae in the matter, said the Centre was supposed to come out with a report on list of child care institutions (CCIs) as well as status of their social audit.
The counsel representing the NCPCR said the Commission was not allowed to conduct social audits in Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Meghalaya, Arunachal Pradesh, Tripura and Mizoram, and added that a rapid social audit was already been done in around 3,000 such homes.
The counsel representing the Centre said the government would furnish all the information as directed by the court within a week.
The bench has slated the hearing for August 21.