Girls Suffer Savagery At State-Funded Shelter In India

By Shakir Husain NEW DELHI, Jul 30 (Bernama) -- Switzerland's top junior female squash player Ambre Allinckx was reportedly not allowed by her parents to travel to India to participate in a recent tournament. They thought the country was not safe for women, according to media reports. Whatever the truth of the Swiss player's story, India is facing a growing problem of brutal sexual assaults against women. Some crimes become national news, while others fail to grab media attention or go unreported. Horrifying rape cases continue to surface every now and then. One recent case that has created national outrage involves a government-funded shelter for girls in the eastern state of Bihar. Dozens of girls, many aged between 7 and 14 years, were raped, tortured, starved, drugged and blackmailed, according the victims' statements published in the Indian press. The young victims at the Balika Grih (girls' home) in the Muzaffarpur district spoke of being helpless to defend themselves against rampant daily abuse. The key suspect identified as Brajesh Thakur, head of the non-governmental organisation (NGO) that operated the shelter, was known as "Hunterwala Uncle" (the uncle with a whip). "He used to beat us with a stick when anybody disobeyed him," one girl said. Another girl, aged 7, said she was raped after her hands and feet were tied up. Thakur denied her food until she apologised and submitted to the sexual abuse. "As soon as the sun set, the girls would be scared. The nights were full of terror," a 10-year-old said, according a report in the Telegraph newspaper. More than 40 girls have undergone medical examination. At least 34 have been found to have been subjected to rapes, three were made to undergo abortion, and another three are pregnant. One girl was allegedly beaten to death. It's estimated that 470 girls were brought to the shelter in the last five years. The way shelter homes for women and children are managed in the country is not transparent and this allows abuse to take place, Delhi Commission for Women chief Swati Maliwal told Bernama. "It is a straightforward failure of the system. The girls were in government care, it didn't protect them," she said. The alleged perpetrators included administrators of the shelter as well as outsiders. Muzaffarpur's child protection officer Ravi Kumar Roshan regularly raped them, the girls told a court. "At times, girls were taken outside at night and they returned the next day. I don't know where they were taken," said one girl. "It has emerged that they were subjected to drug injections on daily basis before someone sexually assaulted them. We can clearly see signs of injection wounds. Now they are showing signs of aggressive behaviour. Some of them tried to smash their heads against the metal grill," Bihar's social welfare director Raj Kumar was quoted as saying in a newspaper report. An influential politician is also believed to be involved in the abuse as the victims have mentioned a "neta" (a common term for a politician in India). "Nobody was allowed to enter the rooms when 'tondwala' (pot-bellied) uncle-ji or 'neta-ji' were around," said a girl. India has legal restrictions on identifying rape victims by name in the media. Police has arrested 10 accused and the Bihar government has ordered an investigation to be conducted by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), one of India's top probe agencies. Tejashwi Yadav, leader of the Opposition in the state assembly, has alleged that the scandal involves many politically "well-connected people". The sex abuse at the shelter was discovered after the Mumbai-based Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS) conducted an audit of shelter homes in Bihar. The report, based on conversations with inmates, has raised serious concerns about at least 15 shelters. "Intriguingly, action has been taken only on one such shelter in Muzaffarpur, while the outrageous crimes committed against women, children, young boys and girls which are being sexually exploited and beaten in the rest of the 14 such homes have been conveniently ignored," a Congress party spokesman said in a press statement. Maliwal said such unchecked abuse cannot happen without the perpetrators enjoying political patronage. She wants to see serious reforms in managing shelter homes throughout India so that homeless women and children can live with some basic human dignity. A lack of oversight and transparency allows inmates to be exploited by those who are supposed to care for them. "These places are worse than jails for women and children. These are torture houses," Maliwal told Bernama. Edited by Sakina Mohamed -- BERNAMA