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Bihar minor, ‘raped’ by school director's son for two years, recalls horror: ‘He filmed entire incident’
Sharing the horrifying experience she faced, the girl told HT that the incident took place when she was in Class 6 in 2017.
She was already scared. The school principal had summoned her over some unpaid dues and told the little girl to follow her. The principal walked right into the library till they reached a door. “You go inside,” the principal told the 12-year-old girl. As soon as she walked into the room, the principal switched off the lights and locked the door from outside.
This was in 2017.
“I screamed,” said the girl, now a 17-year-old, recalling the horrifying moments that changed her life in a room of the private school in Bihar’s Saharsa district.
She wasn’t alone in the room.
The school director’s son had been waiting for her. “He came close to me, pulled my hair, hurt me, raped me and filmed the entire incident…. As he was raping me, the buttons of my shirt broke off,” she said.
Once he was done and loosened his grip, she just wanted to run away. But the principal was guarding the door. “The principal caught hold of me and slapped me before proceeding to fix my hair, clothes…. She told me to return to class and not speak of the incident to anyone,” the girl said.
She didn’t dare to. But now she avoided school and would come up with new excuses to miss school. But they didn’t work for too long and she had to be back at school. He raped her again, and again for the next two years, mostly in the same room inside the library.
There was one time when the traumatised girl mustered the courage to confront her rapist and the principal, and threatened to complain about them. But they were too confident.
"They told me, ‘What will you tell?.... Your parents won’t believe you and the society you live in will boycott you',” she said. He also held out the threat of leaking the videos of the rape to destroy her life. She backed down but convinced her parents to get her shifted to an all-girls school in 2018.
That ended the cycle of rape, not the trauma.
Her mother noticed changes in her daughter but couldn’t put a finger. “She would come back home from school and go directly to her room. She didn’t mix up much. Since her school was a little far away from home, we presumed she was fatigued,” her mother said.
In 2022, she moved out of Saharsa to Patna about 180km away. Her parents wanted her to focus on the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (NEET) - they wanted her to be a doctor - and thought that the opportunities in the state capital will help. She wasn’t so sure but went along.
But deep inside, she continued to be haunted by the abuse; her rapist's touch, his voice and his laughter that would constantly play out in her head.
At her hostel in Patna, she started having anxiety attacks. Her roommate comforted her but she always held back.
One day, she finally ended up talking about the abuse with her roommate. But this was going to be their secret. Talking about it seemed to have helped.
One day, she got a call from an acquaintance from her previous school who, in the course of the conversation, mentioned that the school director’s son was in Patna. That phone call triggered a series of panic attacks that eventually landed her in Patna’s Nobel Emergency Hospital. Her parents were informed of her condition.
“We booked a cab and rushed to Patna from Saharsa the next day. She was discharged by then and was in her hostel. My wife and I met the doctor who kept her under his observation overnight. The doctor advised us to take her to a psychiatrist,” the girl’s father, a lawyer, said.
Her parents wanted her to return to their hometown, Saharsa. But she would have none of it. So her father stayed back in Patna to be at hand if his daughter needed him.
She had another panic attack during the night. “I told my wife to come back again, and the following day, we all went to the psychiatrist.”
It was August 23. She told the psychiatrist about the horrifying events that started in the room in her school library in 2017.
Everyone agreed that she needed to be with her family who would support her. She suffered another panic attack during the journey. This time, she was taking names as she repeatedly kept on saying, ‘Please don’t touch me, don’t pull my hair, don’t touch me’.
“We tried to comfort her the best we could,” recalled the father.
At home, her brother couldn’t believe that his kid sister had gone through so much. “She hadn’t been keeping well for a few years but we didn’t know that she was raped and abused. It was only after the psychiatrist’s intervention that we came to know about the trauma,” he said.
It was the brother who filed a first information report (FIR) at the Saharsa police station against the school director’s son and the school principal. A case was registered under Section 376 (rape) of the Indian Penal Code (Punishment for rape) and Sections 4/8 of the Pocso Act (sexual and penetrative sexual assault of a minor).
The two were arrested and are in jail.
Deputy inspector general (Kosi range) Shivdeep Wamanrao Lande later mentioned the heart-wrenching case in an emotional post on Facebook and encouraged others to come forward. He said two to three girls had contacted him with similar experiences of abuse.
Sub inspector Rupam Kumar, who is investigating the case, told HT that electronic devices used by the accused have been confiscated and sent for forensic examination.
The girl’s father said the panic attacks haven’t stopped. Neither have her attempts to hurt herself. “Her recent self-harm attempts resulted in her admission to the ICU at a hospital,” he said, hoping the police investigation and the trial are completed expeditiously.
On Friday, Swati Maliwal of the Delhi Commission for Women wrote to Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar raising concerns in connection with the case.
“In Saharsa, Bihar, the school director’s son kept raping a girl for 2 years. The school principal also helped the accused,” Maliwal wrote on X (formally Twitter).
The DCW chairperson added, “The girl’s family has sent us a complaint. No compensation or even legal aid has been received yet. A letter has been sent to Nitish Kumar ji regarding this very serious matter.”
