Patna: India’s Central Bureau of Investigation on Wednesday arrested a doctor, amid investigations into a child sex abuse scandal in Bihar state.
The private medical practitioner, identified as Dr Ashwini Kumar, is being accused of administering sedatives to minor girls at a children’s home.
Kumar was arrested in the Kurhani block of Muzaffarpur district after the needle of suspicion moved towards his role in the care home rape scandal.
As many as 34 girls were allegedly raped at the government-funded care home being run by a non-governmental organisation (NGO).
It is alleged the doctor had close links with the NGO chief, Brajesh Thakur, the prime accused in the case who is being held in custody at the high-security Patiala jail in Punjab.
Dr Kumar would visit the care home in the name of medical check-ups of the girls and would inject sedative into their bodies.
The arrest comes after a large amount of sedatives was recovered from the care home during investigations.
“It’s quite possible that several girls were sexually abused after being injected sedatives,” an unnamed CBI official told local media on Wednesday adding they had enough reason to suspect Kumar since they didn’t get full medical records of the inmates and neither did they got clear explanations about why he would visit the care home so regularly.
This is the second big arrest for the CBI in the girls’ sex abuse case.
Sex slaves
On Tuesday, investigators took into custody NGO official Madhu Kumari, who is accused of grooming the minors to become sex slaves.
“We have found during investigation that Madhu was involved in teaching children how to have sex,” a CBI official was quoted as telling news agency ANI.
The alleged sexual abuse of girls came to light after the Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS), a multi-campus public funded research university in Mumbai, conducted a social audit of the care home being run at Muzaffarur town.
The TISS, in its 100-page report, reportedly mentioned that “Institutions of all categories were found to be indulging in some form of abuse. Incidents of harassments, sexual abuse, corporal punishment, neglect and humiliation were reported rampantly”.
Acting on the report, the police later rescued all the girls and sent them to hospital for medical examinations.
It was only then that the horror of the rapes came to light.
The case took another sinister turn when the investigating agency found the husband of Bihar social welfare minister Manju Verma was allegedly involved in the case.
As per CBI sources, the minister’s husband had talked to the prime accused Thakur as many as 17 times in between February and May this year.
The revelation led to the resignation of minister who hailed from the ruling Janata Dal United (JD-U) headed by chief minister Nitrish Kumar.
The minister has been suspended from the party in the aftermath of sensational revelations.
The case took another turn when the CBI while investigating the case raided the house of the minister and recovered 50 live cartridges, leading to registration of a case against both the minister and the husband.
Soon they went into hiding but under pressure from the Supreme Court, both have surrendered before the court and have been jailed. The ex-minister Verma surrendered before the court only on Tuesday.
