3-year-old girl molested in school bus by conductor on way back home: Cops

A police official said the minor told her parents about the incident which happened in Madhya Pradesh’s capital Bhopal and the accused, the school bus conductor, was arrested.

A three-year-old girl was allegedly molested inside a school bus while on her way home in Bhopal’s Ayodhya Nagar area on Thursday afternoon.

The 18-year-old school bus conductor was arrested in Bhopal after the minor’s parents filed a complaint with the police. (Reuters File Photo)

Ayodhya Nagar police station in-charge Baljit Singh said that the girl was molested by the bus conductor Saurabh (18), who has been arrested and booked under Section 354 of IPC.

“There were other children on the bus but all of them were of the junior section. The accused sat down next to the victim and started touching her inappropriately. The victim kept quiet at that time, but told her mother about the incident when she reached home. Her parents then approached the police and lodged a complaint,” Singh said.

Madhya Pradesh’s rape and molestation statistics are grim. According to the state women’s cell records, 1,894 rapes and 4,069 molestation cases were registered in the first five months of 2018. This translates to an average of 13 rapes and 27 instances of molestation every day.

Statistics from the preceding years are no better. According to the state crime records bureau, the state witnessed 5,310 cases of rape – or 15 such incidents a day – in 2017. The state registered 4,882 rape cases in 2016 – the highest in the country. It had the dubious distinction of topping rape cases with 4,391 cases of sexual assault in 2015 too.

Over the last seven months, fast track courts in Madhya Pradesh have pronounced 12 death sentences in rape cases.