Four residents of a shelter home for minor girls disappeared mysteriously from the facility located at Patliputra Colony under the jurisdiction of Patliputra police station in the state capital around midnight on Saturday.

The girls, aged between 12 and 16 years, escaped from the second floor of the building after scaling the boundary wall. The security guard and other staff of the shelter home noticed the incident hours later.

Deputy superintendent of police (DSP, law and order) Rakesh Kumar said that the inmates of the Asha Kiran Home for Girls escaped by scaling down to the ground from the windows of their rooms by using a curtain, a sari and a dupatta.

Patliputra police station house officer (SHO) T.N. Tiwari said that the CCTV footage obtained from the shelter home located on the premises of a noted public school showed that the girls — one from Bengal and three from Bihar — escaped from the facility at 11.55pm on Saturday.

The employees of the shelter home said they came to know about the incident around 1.30am and subsequently informed the police. A police team was sent to public places such as railway stations and bus stands to trace the girls, but the team drew blank. While three of the girls were brought to the facility in October this year, the fourth one was shifted there earlier this month.

Three of the girls were stated to be residents of Araria, Buxar and Patna districts.

The office in-charge of Asha Kiran, Alka, has lodged a complaint with the police.

The cops later quizzed the employees and the security guard of the shelter home.

“The role of the employees is also being probed,” SHO Tiwari said.

Asha Kiran, run by an NGO called Mashal, drew flak in July this year when it refused to keep the inmates of Balika Grih, a shelter home for minor girls in a Muzaffarpur where the inmates were sexually exploited.

Alka had written to the social welfare department officials, requesting not to shift the inmates of Balika Grih to Asha Kiran. Security around shelter homes run by NGOs across Bihar came under the scanner after three inmates escaped from the Vishesh Ashra Home located at Nepali Nagar under the jurisdiction of Rajeev Nagar police station in Patna in August this year. Two more inmates escaped later. One of them was later found from Danapur.

The police had arrested one Nagina Singh alias Banarsi for helping the girls escape from the facility. Later a few other office bearers of the shelter home were arrested and sent to jail.

The curtain, sari and dupatta the girls used to escape. Manoj Kumar