A Supreme Court bench headed by Justice Madan B Lokuron, on Wednesday ordered a CBI probe into Bihar shelter homes case which involved minors complaining of sexual abuses and misdemeanors.
The court has rejected Bihar government’s plea asking more time to show seriousness of the state police in the investigations.
Justice Lokur commented,”What are we supposed to do if the state does nothing? Just keep asking for status reports? Sorry.”
CBI is already probing into the sexual assault case of one shelter home. The court has now ordered CBI to probe into another 16 additional shelter homes in the state, which were charged of sexual assault on minors in a social audit report by Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS).
The bench asked the CBI to take over the investigation from Bihar police and submit their first status report by January 31, 2019. SC also ordered that no CBI officer probing the case can be transferred without permission from the court.
CBI’s lawyer submitted that the agency may not be able to take up the additional cases on its own because another bench in the SC has restrained the interim CBI director from taking any major policy decision. To this, the bench asked the lawyer to get instructions afresh since the investigation in this case has nothing to do with the restraining order. After five minutes, CBI lawyer turned up saying that the agency is willing to take over the investigation. The SC bench then passed its order.