A serving jawan of the Indian Army was arrested for allegedly throwing an eight-year-old child, daughter of a retired Indian Navy sailor, off the moving express train after she raised an alarm about his sexual advances in the small hours of Tuesday.
The arrested person Prabhu Malappa Uphar (33) posted in Jhansi, Uttar Pradesh is a native of Sugmadhur village in Belgaum, Karnataka. He was caught by the railway police in Bhusawal area of Jalgaon district in Maharashtra on Tuesday afternoon after the injured child found on the tracks passing through Lonand, Satara, recounted her experience.
The train passes through Salpa at 1:59am and passes through Lonand at 2:11am - the route on which the girl was found - as per the schedule of the train by Indian Railways. The train reaches Bhusawal junction around 12:55pm, as per the same schedule.
“We set up a search on the train starting in Ahmednagar and around 300 constables were boarded on the train from various stops. We zeroed down on the bogie and searched between seats 21 and 40 and asked the people in the area about suspects. There were four suspects. After preliminary inquiry, we were able to identify this man,” said Dilip Vayse-Patil, superintendent, Government railway police (GRP), Pune.
The GRP officials claimed that after detaining and interrogating four suspects, the Uphar has confessed to have committed the crime.
{{/usCountry}}The GRP officials claimed that after detaining and interrogating four suspects, the Uphar has confessed to have committed the crime.
{{/usCountry}}As per the girl’s statement to the doctors and the police, the man picked the child up while she was asleep near her parents and took her to the toilet. The girl woke up when he tried to undress her and raised an alarm, according to the police. The man then promised to take her back to her parents but instead, threw her out of the train, as per a statement issued by GRP Pune.
The child was found by Lonand villagers who alerted the station master, who in turn informed the police.
The girl was found around 6am after which the railway authorities circulated a message across nearby stations and on-board ticket-collectors to check if a child was missing from their trains, according to GRP Miraj officials.
The train had reached around Ahmednagar around 7am when the TC on the Goa Hazrat Nizamuddin Express woke up all the parents on board the train to check if any of their children were missing. It was then that the child’s parents realised that she is missing from the upper berth where she was sleeping.
“The villagers in Lonand living near the new track, where she was lying, found her and informed the station master who called us. We took the girl to Lonand government hospital, and the doctors referred her to Satara Civil hospital. The doctors at Satara civil hospital started speaking to the girl and she started revealing the details,” said police sub inspector Namdev Tarde of GRP Miraj police station.
The girl has suffered a fractured leg, sustained multiple scratches on her torso and abdomen, and a deep gash on her chin.
The girl was travelling with her parents, and two sisters -one younger and one elder. After retiring from Goa, the man was taking his family back to his wife’s native place, according to the police.
A case under relevant sections of the Indian Penal Code and Protection of Children from Sexual Offence (POCSO) Act, 2012 is getting registered at a GRP police station.