NEW DELHI: Learning a lesson from the Muzaffarpur shelter home scandal in Bihar where mass sexual abuse of girl inmates had come to light last year, the Centre has decided not to alert state governments when a tip-off on wrongdoings in shelter homes are received.
Union Women and Child Development Ministry has accepted that it made a mistake by reporting to the state that something was wrong at the Muzaffarpur shelter home six months before the Bihar government finally shut the child care institution, run by an NGO and funded by both the Centre and the state.
“We had first come to know that there is something horribly wrong with the Muzaffarpur shelter home and shared the lead with the state government, which turned out to be a big mistake,” WCD Minister Maneka Gandhi said in an interaction with reporters.
“In that case, it later turned out that the husband of the minister (Manju Verma who was the social welfare minister in the Nitish Kumar government when scandal broke out) was involved in abusing the girls,” Gandhi said.
Gandhi added that inspections of shelter homes in all states were being carried out and in case of any trouble, central agencies were asked to visit the homes. The first ever nationwide mapping and review of 9,589 shelter homes for children, carried out last year by the ministry, had found that a large number of children in shelter homes are often left unsupervised at night and subjected to corporal punishments.
The children in these institutions are also given sub-standard food, not provided adequate medical or legal aid and are left to languish for years without proper education or any skill trainings, the exercise found. Incidentally, the mapping of the shelter homes was on when the Muzaffarpur case came to light.