The court on Wednesday asked the CBI to file a status report by January 31. CBI already probing Muzaffarpur shelter home case Agency expected to file chargesheet by December 7 CBI officers probing shelter home cases can't be transferred without Supreme Court's permission The Supreme Court has transferred 16 cases related to the sexual and mental exploitation of children in Bihar shelter homes to the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI). The court on Wednesday asked the CBI to file a status report by January 31. The CBI is already probing the Muzaffarpur shelter home case. The court was told the agency is expected to file a chargesheet by December 7. The Supreme Court said CBI officers probing shelter home cases shouldn't be transferred without its permission. The Bihar government's request that the investigation of the shelter home cases shouldn't be transferred to the central agency was dismissed. On Tuesday, an extremely unhappy Supreme Court bench, headed by Justice Madan B Lokur, faulted the Bihar government for filing "soft" FIRs in cases dealing with the sexual, mental and physical exploitation of boys and girls in 9 Bihar shelter homes. The court called the state government's behaviour "shameful" and "inhuman" for not invoking more stringent sections of Indian law (when local police filed FIRs). In the Muzaffarpur shelter home, girls were regularly raped, beaten and terrorised, according to a report by the Tata Institute of Social Sciences. "It's very shameful," Justice Lokur said. "If a child is being sodomised and you say it's nothing. How can you do this? It's inhuman." The court said yesterday that it may hand over the investigation of the cases to the CBI, which was earlier probing only one - the Muzaffarpur shelter home case.