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Uncle among three arrested for gang-raping MP minor for over a year
An engineering student and a minor boy also began taking advantage of the victim after they allegedly found the uncle raping her in a common area of their building. Police sent the girl to a shelter after a medical examination.
A 10-year-old girl was allegedly gang-raped by three people, including her paternal uncle, at Saket Nagar in Bhopal on several occasions over the last one year. Police arrested the accused with the assistance of one of her friends on Tuesday evening.
Childline director (Bhopal branch) Archana Sahay said the girl had been staying with her paternal uncle and aunt for a year because she had no parents or siblings. “The matter came to light when the victim, a Class 5 student at a government school, told her 12-year-old friend that the accused used to do ‘bad things’ to her. She also confessed to being in great pain due to the repeated sexual assaults she was being subjected to,” she added.
The shocked friend informed her mother, who spoke to the victim in this regard. “Later, she shared a recording of the conversation with us,” said Sahay.
Rashmi Mishra, additional superintendent of police with the Bhopal crime branch, said the paternal uncle had started raping the girl soon after he took her under his wing. “One day, an engineering student and a minor boy found the uncle sexually assaulting the girl in a common area of the building. Following this, they began blackmailing and raping her too,” she added.
Mishra said the repeated sexual assaults had badly affected the girl. “She sounded just like an adult while registering the FIR with us. We shifted her to a girls’ shelter after conducting a medical examination.”
This is just the latest in a string of sexual assaults involving children to have occurred in the state over the last few weeks. While an under-aged girl was raped and murdered by her uncle in Dindori a fortnight ago, a Class 10 student from Mandsaur was gang-raped in a jungle by five people over a period of three days last week. In yet another ghastly incident, a minor was allegedly raped before being killed in Satna last Tuesday.
In 2016, Madhya Pradesh witnessed as many as 4,717 cases – the third-highest in the country – being registered under the Protection of Children against Sexual Offences Act.
