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11-year-old sexually assaulted, threatened inside Pune school
Officials from Pune’s Shivajinagar police station said that on March 23, the suspect entered the premises during school hours and took the minor near a lavatory, where he sexually assaulted her.
An 11-year-old girl was allegedly sexually assaulted inside her school by a man who later threatened her with dire consequences if she told anyone about the crime, police officials said on Thursday.
Officials from Pune’s Shivajinagar police station said that on March 23, the suspect entered the premises during school hours and took the minor near a lavatory, where he sexually assaulted her.
The minor, who studies in class 6, told her friends, who in turn alerted the school authorities.
“The school informed the girl’s parents and the police,” senior inspector Anita More said.
A First Information Report (FIR) was registered based on a complainant filed by the girl’s mother later in the evening. The girl’s father works in a finance firm while the mother works in a retail shop.
The alleged crime occurred shortly before 11.30 am, when classes begin in the school.
“The man took the girl to a toilet in the school premises where he allegedly sexually assaulted and later fled,” More said.
Police said that it is unclear how the suspect, who is as yet unidentified, was able to gain entry into the school.
A case was registered against the unidentified man under Indian Penal Code Section 376 (rape) 341 (wrongful restraint) and 506 (criminal intimidation), and provisions of the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act.
The police have formed three teams to trace the suspect. An investigating team is scrutinising the footage from closed circuit television (CCTV) cameras in the school. Another has started questioning witnesses.
The 11-year-old was taken to a trauma centre of a hospital and later discharged. “She is fine and has given the police details about the incident,” More said.
School authorities said the man, who appeared to be young, approached the minor girl inside the school. “He struck a conversation with the girl claiming to be a friend of her father’s and had come to meet her,” a senior member of school management said.
The man reportedly asked the girl to lead him to the washroom. The girl initially refused, but on his insistence, she took him to the washroom where he allegedly forcibly removed her clothes and sexually abused her. The girl pushed him away and managed to run out of the washroom following which the man fled the spot, the school management member quoted above said.
According to another school functionary, the girl was in a state of shock when she informed her classmates who in turn informed the teachers. “We along with the parents immediately contacted the police. We are now supporting the student and the parents in every way possible way,” they said.
Last week, another incident had come to light in which an 11-year-old girl was allegedly raped over a period of five years and on several occasions by four members of her family, including her father, older teenage brother and paternal grandfather. The grandfather, and a distant relative have been arrested and the brother has been detained. A team has been sent to Bihar, the father’s home state, to arrest him.
Data from Pune’s police commissionerate indicates a rise in cases of crimes against women and children in the city in 2021. Among minor survivors of sexual assault, the number jumped from 110 in 2020 to 137 in 2021. The Crime in India 2020 report brought out by the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) last year revealed that 38.8% of all crimes against children registered in the country pertained to sexual assault — there was also a rise in the number of sexual assault cases registered under the POCSO Act from 2019.
