Police in Andhra Pradesh’s Punganur town of Chittoor district, 570 km south of Hyderabad arrested five minor boys on Thursday for allegedly raping a 12-year old girl for the last two months.
The boys who are in the age group of 16-17 years were produced before a local court and subsequently shifted to juvenile home after judicial remand. The accused belong to Bhagat Singh Nagar in Punganur.
Two of the accused are class VII students, one is in class X, one boy is an intermediate student while one is illiterate. They all live in the girl’s neighbourhood and their parents work as porters.
The girl is from a poor family. Her father died long ago and mother is a labourer.
“The boys had first trapped the girl in their neighbourhood by offering her chocolates nearly two months ago and allegedly raped her,” Punganur inspector of police P Sainath said.
Subsequently, they repeated the offence several times by threatening that they would kill her, if she revealed the crime to anybody.
On Wednesday night, unable to bear the torture, the girl finally confided in her parents. They caught hold of two of the accused with the help of locals and thrashed them before handing them over to the police. Later, the police took the other three boys into custody as well before formally arresting them Thursday morning.
{{/usCountry}}On Wednesday night, unable to bear the torture, the girl finally confided in her parents. They caught hold of two of the accused with the help of locals and thrashed them before handing them over to the police. Later, the police took the other three boys into custody as well before formally arresting them Thursday morning.
{{/usCountry}}“We have booked cases under Section 376 of Indian Penal Code, besides relevant sections of Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act,” inspector Sainath said.
Over the last three months, minor boys have been involved in a spate of rapes of minor girls in different parts of the country.