New Delhi: After the shocking revelations about sexual abuse of children at Bihar’s Muzaffarpur shelter home, a school and meditation centre in Gaya have now reported similar abuse by a monk.Following medical tests conducted on all of the 32 boys at the school, majority of them Chakmas from Assam and Tripura, a case has been filed by Gaya Police. The charges are based on the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act as well as other IPC sections. The accused in all these cases is 49-year-old Sujoy Bhante, known as Sanghapriye, who ran an NGO which was in charge of the school and the meditation centre.The sexual abuse came to light after Sadhnanand Bhante, a Buddhist monk visiting the Mahabodhi temple in Gaya stopped by the school to find out about the ten boys who had been sent there from Assam. Having been instrumental in getting them admitted in the school, the Mumbai-based monk felt a sense of responsibility for checking on them.The lid was blown off the racket when an eight-year-old inmate of the school told the monk,“Humein yahan se nikalo (Take us out from here).” The boys are between 6-14 years of age.“When I visited that day, the boys didn’t say anything further, probably because some caretakers of the school were within earshot,” The visiting monk from Tripura told the Indian Express. “But I saw blisters on the faces and heads of some of them. Apart from that eight-year-old boy, several children came up, requesting me to take them away. But even then, I could not sense what had really gone wrong,” says Sadhnanand, who has been based in Mumbai for the last 20 years.Later, the boys repeated their request to Bhante at the Mahabodhi temple, leading him to call the headman of the village in Assam who had moved the boys to the school. “When I met them again at the Mahabodhi temple, they repeated their request,” he says. And that was when Sadhnanand decided to sound the alarm. “I called up the headman of the village in Assam who had moved these ten children, including his two sons, from various villages in Karbi Anglong to this school,” he said.A report in the Hindu said, “The child monks had complained to their respective guardians about physical and sexual abuse by their head monk. They also informed us that they were thrashed, mistreated and sexually abused while staying in the school. We are investigating the matter now”, deputy superintendent of police, Rajkumar Shah told local journalists.The FIR registered at Gaya on August 29 says: “Several of these children narrated how they would be made to go naked and how ‘galat kaam’ (wrong act) would be done to them.” It further informs that the boys were “not allowed” to go home even once after 18 months at the school. The medical test results are yet to come.According to the Indian Express report, Sanghapriye’s trust registered with the Bihar government, claims to be “working for socio-economic, educational and cultural” development of the underprivileged. The Gaya police are now investigating whether the NGO was running a sex racket.The Gaya revelations find resonance with the earlier cases of child abuse at Muzaffarpur and Deoria shelter homes. Earlier this month, at least 34 inmates at a shelter home in Muzaffarpur, run by Brajesh Thankur, reported sexual abuse at the shelter. Since then, the Bihar government under mounting pressure, has sacked 23 officials and staffers of child protection units on charges of “negligence”. Subsequent investigations have shown Brajesh Thakur running a number of companies, besides enjoying proximity to a range of politicians.“Around 2000, Thakur came close to many politicians including Anand Mohan who is currently serving a life sentence for the lynching of then Gopalganj district magistrate G. Krishnaiah. He contested 2000 Bihar Assembly election on a BSP ticket and emerged as the runner-up,” said a report in Financial Express.Close on the heels of this case, reports of similar sexual abuse came from a shelter home in UP’s Deoria town. A police raid at the home revealed that as many as 18 of the 41 girls housed at the home were found to be missing. Twenty four of them were rescued and the couple owning the shelter home were taken into custody.The case came to light after a ten-year-old girl fled the shelter and informed police about what was going on. The girl told the police that people in cars used to drive down to the shelter and take away girls above 15 years of age. The girls would return to the shelter in a state of distress. Reports said some of the girls were often sent to nearby homes for doing chores like cleaning and washing.