After reportedly absconding for days, former Bihar Minister Manju Verma, surrendered before a court in Begusarai district in Bihar on Tuesday. She is wanted in connection with the Muzaffarpur shelter home rape cases.

COMMERCIAL BREAK
SCROLL TO CONTINUE READING

Meanwhile, Bihar police claims that they were carrying out massive raids to arrest her, were exposed when the ex-minister reached the court of the Additional Chief Judicial Magistrate in Majhaul in an auto rickshaw with some supporters.

Verma's counsel said she was unwell because of which she could not surrender earlier. Even when she reached the court on Tuesday, she fainted for a bit and had to be revived. Following a preliminary check, she was forwarded to judicial custody, a source said.

Her surrender comes as big relief to the state government, which was left red-faced when the Supreme Court earlier this month expressed shock over their failure to trace and arrest a former cabinet minister and had summoned the police chief in person, if Verma was not arrested by November 27.

On August 17, Verma was booked in a case pertaining to recovery of live cartridges from her home in Begusarai during a search by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), while probing the Muzaffarpur shelter home assault case. Her husband Chandrashekhar Verma had surrendered in the same case on October 29.

In another development, Madhu, a close-aide of the main accused Brajesh Thakur, surrendered before the CBI in Muzaffarpur on Tuesday. She was accompanied by her lawyer.

The CBI has detained her for questioning since many of the girls of the shelter home had taken Madhu's name as the one who knew what was going on, and even alleged that she assaulted some of them, a source said.