The day after J&K Chief Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad transferred the Srinagar sex abuse scandal involving some top politicians and police officers to the CBI, the High Court stepped in.

“Pushing innocent minor girls into the flesh trade is an extremely treacherous act and if, constitutionally acknowledged, social and moral commitments mean anything, the traders of this treachery have to be brought to account,” Justice Bashir Ahmad Kirmani of J&K High Court said today.

Taking suo motu cognizance of the scandal first reported by The Indian Express on April 27, Justice Kirmani directed Registrar, Judicial, in the High Court ‘‘to seek orders in the mater for its appropriate listing, under rules, preferably during current week.”

The Indian Express had first exposed the sex abuse scandal involving two former ministers and several senior police and security force officers. The expose created an uproar here forcing the government to transfer the case to CBI on Monday. The paper received an anonymous threat call warning it against publication of the names of those allegedly involved.

“The painful reports regarding inducement and blackmail of teen aged girls to lure and coerce them into immoral physical submission has appeared in the press,” Justice Kirmani observed. ‘‘What makes the reports alarming are allegations that some persons highly placed in different spheres are directly involved.”

Justice Kirmani said the reports are ‘‘so horrifying that even a fraction only thereof would be a complete horror in itself.”