Brajesh Thakur and 18 others were on Monday convicted by a Delhi court for sexual and physical assault of girl inmates of a shelter home in Muzaffarpur, Bihar.
Arguments on the quantum of sentence will be heard on January 28.
Additional Sessions Judge Saurabh Kulshreshtha convicted Thakur for aggravated sexual assault under the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act, gang rape, rape and other related offences under the Indian Penal Code and the Juvenile Justice Act.
Vicky, one of the accused, has been acquitted.
The court had postponed the verdict and sought a response from the CBI, following allegations by the accused that the testimonies of the victims were not trustworthy.
The case pertains to the allegation that at least 34 girl inmates of the shelter home were sexually assaulted. The CBI took over the probe in 2018 following a Supreme Court directive. It recorded statements of the victims and also made several arrests, including that of Thakur.
It was alleged that Thakur would bring in people for sexually assaulting the inmates. Some of them were also taken to hotels where they were raped.
After the CBI filed a charge sheet, the court framed charges against the accused persons on March 30, 2019. They were tried for a range of offences, including gang rape, sexual assault and harassment, cruelty to child under the authority of shelter-home functionaries and Social Welfare department officials, and administering drugs to the victims.
The shelter home was run by NGO “Sewa Sankalp Evam Vikas Samiti”. The instances of sexual assault were first made public through a report by the Tata Institute of Social Sciences.
