Patna: Authorities in Bihar are demolishing the building housing a child care home to the ground. This is site where at least 34 girls were allegedly gang-raped.

The crimes had come to light in May this year.

The three-storeyed building located in the state’s Muzaffarpur district, some 80-kilometres from Patna, functioned as a shelter for destitute and orphaned girls. The manual demolition of the building began on Thursday, under the supervision of a five-member committee after moving all the inmates to other child care homes. Authorities say it will take at least a month to raze the building completely.

Hundreds of villagers gathered at the spot after the dozens of workers began hammering the walls. Local residents welcomed the move, saying the building was a blot on their area. Yet, they had remained silent all these years since the man running the care home was well politically connected and had threatened them.

“We began demolishing the buildings from Thursday evening and it will take at least a month to raze the entire building,” Suresh Kumar Sinha, a senior official supervising the demolition work, said on Friday. According to him, they were demolishing the building manually, given the densely populated area it’s located in.

House of abuse

Authorities said the building was constructed in utter violation of rules. Then, the building turned into a “horror home” for the girls, who were sexually abused and tortured. The plight of the victims can be imagined from the fact that the 50-feet high building had no ventilation and it was especially designed to ensure that no cries would be heard by the neighbours or passers-by.

The horrifying incidents came to light after Tata Institutes of Social Sciences arrived to conduct a social audit of the care home and then submitted the report to the state government in February this year. However, the state government took three months to register the case and begin the investigation, now being conducted by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI).

The state-funded care home was being run by a non-governmental organisation. Media baron Brajesh Thakur, who ran the NGO, is the main accused in the case and is currently lodged in Punjab’s Patiala jail. Another key accused is the husband of former social welfare minister Manju Verma. Both Verma and her husband are currently in jail.

During the investigation, it was found that the minister’s husband had frequently visited the care home and also spoke to the main accused Thakur as many as 17 times between January and May this year.