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Class 7 girl dials helpline number she found on textbook, says teacher raped her
The Class 7 student was raped by her teacher on October 5. She finally complained about it on October 14 when she called up a child helpline number she spotted on her textbook.
JAIPUR: A school teacher was arrested late on Thursday evening on charges of raping an 11-year-old girl in Rajasthan’s Jhunjhunu district earlier this month. The 31-year-old government school teacher also threatened the girl not to tell anyone. And she didn’t, for about nine days.
On Thursday morning, she spotted a child helpline phone number on her school textbook and mustered the courage to give them a call. It probably helped that the teacher was on leave.
“She narrated the entire incident to them. Soon after, members of the Child Welfare Committee reached out to the girl and approached the district superintendent of police, who directed immediate action,” said Bhajana Ram, station house officer (SHO) of Singhana police station.
According to the girl’s statement, the teacher told her to stay back after school on October 5 and sexually assaulted her after other students left for the day. “He threatened her not to report what had happened,” Bhajana Ram said.
The girl also told the police that the government school teacher had been sending obscene messages and photos to her for some time but made sure that these were deleted after the rape.
Bhajana Ram said a team of police officers was quickly sent to Alwar district 200 km away to the teacher’s family home and arrested him on Thursday evening.
The officer said the suspect, who comes from a family of educationists, was married to a school teacher posted in another district. He is the son of a retired teacher, and his sister and her husband are also lecturers in a government college.
