The Supreme Court has expressed deep concern over rising incidents of rape in the country and said that women are being raped “left, right and centre”.
A bench comprising Justices M B Lokur, Deepak Gupta and K M Joseph pulled up the Bihar government for funding an NGO which ran the shelter home in Muzaffarpur where girls were allegedly raped and sexually abused.
The bench referred to National Crime Records Bureau data and said that every six hours, a woman is raped in India.
The court referred the NCRB data and said 38,947 women were raped in India in 2016.
“What is to be done? Girls and women are getting raped left, right and centre,” the bench said.
Advocate Aparna Bhat, who was appointed as amicus curiae in the matter, told the court that no compensation has been paid to the alleged victims of sexual assault at the Muzaffarpur shelter home.
The lawyer also said that one of the girls, who was allegedly raped at the shelter home in Muzaffarpur, was still “missing”.
Tata Institute of Social Sciences, which conducted an audit of shelter homes, told the court that out of 110 such institutions in Bihar, “grave concerns” have been raised about 15.
To this, the Bihar government told the apex court that nine cases of sexual abuse have been lodged involving these 15 institutions run by various NGOs.