Hunt on for four suspected of raping ex-Bihar home inmate

NEW DELHI: Officials have identified four people suspected of abducting and gang-raping a former inmate of a shelter home in Muzaffarpur, the police said on Monday.

The suspects, who allegedly sexually assaulted the 18-yearold woman in a moving car on Friday in Bettiah in West Champaran, are on the run, Jitendra Kumar, additional director general (headquarters) of the Bihar Police, told mediapersons.

The alleged crime came to light on Sunday after the woman approached the police. The woman lives with her mother at a rented accommodation in Bettiah.

The woman’s father is a fruit vendor in Nepal.

The Muzaffarpur case hit the headlines in 2018 after a social audit report by Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS) highlighted that over 30 girls were allegedly raped at the government-aided shelter home, run by an NGO.

“Last year, she (the woman) fled home after we denied her permission to marry a man of her choice and somehow landed at the Muzaffarpur shelter home. She was barely there for threefour days before being she was shifted to a shelter home in Mokama. We somehow got to know about her whereabouts and brought her back home. Later, we got her married with the same person she loved,” said the father who is visiting Bettiah.

He denied any kind of sexual exploitation of his daughter at the two shelter homes where she spent a few days before reuniting with her family.

The family said the woman was shifted to Mokama a few days after the Muzaffarpur scandal surfaced, and then reunited with the family later in 2018.