The Supreme Court had on Tuesday lashed out at the government and the police for failing to arrest former minister Manju Verma.
Former Bihar social welfare minister Manju Verma. (File Photo: Twitter)
A day after the Supreme Court pulled up the Bihar Police for failing to arrest former minister Manju Verma in the Muzzafarpur shelter home case, the government told the top court that the minister had gone missing.
Expressing displeasure over the statement, the apex court said, “all is not well in Bihar”.
“It’s very strange. Former minister goes in hiding and the government does not know and has failed to arrest her after her bail plea rejection,” the court said.
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The Supreme Court had on Tuesday lashed out at the government and the police saying, “Just because she (Former Bihar minister Manju Verma) happens to be cabinet minister doesn’t make her above the law. The whole thing is highly suspicious. Why has she not been arrested? It’s too much. Nobody is bothered about the law”.
Read | Move Muzaffarpur shelter home accused to Punjab jail, arrest ex-Bihar minister: SC
Earlier in September, an FIR was registered against the former minister and her husband in August under Arms Act, 1959, following the recovery of 50 cartridges from her in-law’s house at Begusarai district during a CBI raid in connection with the Muzaffarpur shelter home sex scandal.
Social welfare minister Manju Verma had to resign after it became known that her husband was in close touch with the main accused Brijesh Thakur.
Manju Verma’s husband Chandrasekhar Verma on Monday surrendered before the Begusarai District Court after a lower court and the Patna High Court repeatedly rejected his interim bail petitions.
At the shelter home in Muzaffarpur, 34 girls – aged seven to fourteen – were allegedly drugged, raped, forced to sleep naked and scalded with boiling water. Some of the girls were also forced to undergo an abortion.
The case came to light when the Bihar Social Welfare Department filed an FIR based on a social audit of the shelter home conducted by the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai.
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