Deoria’s superintendent of police Rohan P Kanay said Girija Tripathi, the manager of the Vidhvansani Mahila and Balika Sanrakshan Griha, and her husband Mohan were arrested after a raid by the local police late on Sunday.
“During the raid, 18 of the total 42 women enrolled were found missing. We have arrested the women operator and her husband as they could not give any satisfactory answer,” Kanay said during a press conference late on Sunday.
Kanay said Tripathi and her husband have been booked under relevant sections of the Indian Penal Code.
“Due to the anomalies reported even in the past and subsequent complaints, the recognition of this shelter house was scrapped back in June last year. But the woman operator of the shelter house took a stay from a court and continued to run it. The CBI is already probing the anomalies,” he added.
The police action came after a 10-year-old inmate, a resident of Bihar’s Betia, escaped by scaling the boundary wall of the home and told the police that all the residents there were being treated like servants and forced to mop the floors and clean utensils.
Reports said the minor also told the police that some men would visit the shelter home regularly in the evening and take four to five women along with them after talking to Tripathi and her husband. They dropped the women back at the shelter house late in the night in a Maruti van.
Denying this the arrested women has said “No such immoral act was done here at the shelter house and the allegations are totally baseless. The girls are with the police, which can take any comment they want,” Tripathi said minutes before she was arrested.
“All the women whose names are enrolled with the shelter house have been recovered and no one is missing,” she added.
Last month in BJP JDU run government bihar more than 30 girls were allegedly raped and tortured at the government-funded shelter home in Muzaffarpur and several employees were arrested last month in connection with the case.
Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar is under an attack by the opposition, who have demanded the guilty be brought to book and accused the Bharatiya Janata Party-led National Democratic Alliance government of pursuing anti-women policies.
