New Delhi: The CBI informed the Supreme Court on Thursday that it has recovered skeleton of a minor girl during the ongoing probe into the Muzzafarpur shelter home case in which several girls were allegedly raped and sexually abused.
The agency told a bench of Justices Madan B Lokur, S Abdul Nazeer and Deepak Gupta that it has interviewed the girls who were residing in the shelter home with assistance from experts of the National Institute of Mental Health and Neuro Sciences (NIMHANS), and needed some more time to talk to them again in view of the facts emerging in the probe.
CBI’s counsel told the bench that experts from NIMHANS were dealing with the aspects pertaining to the trauma faced by these girls and the exercise has yielded “good results” so far.
The bench observed that both the “investigation and rehabilitation aspect should go side by side” in the case. “We cannot look only at the investigation factor. We have to look at the rehabilitation factor also. It (rehabilitation) is as important as the investigation.”
Advocate Aparna Bhat, assisting the court as an amicus curiae in the matter, told the bench that CBI’s probe was going on and the agency was also recording statement of witnesses in the case. T
he counsel appearing for Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS) said that probe into the case was at a crucial stage and new facts have emerged in the matter.
“Various girls are suffering from trauma. They (CBI) are conducting the investigation but they (girls) require separate counselling from NIMHANS. They (girls) cannot be treated only as evidence,” the counsel said. Senior advocate Ranjit Kumar, appearing for Bihar government, told the bench that rehabilitation of these girls should continue as they have gone through lot of trauma. (PTI)
