E-Paper
Four-year old raped in Madhya Pradesh’s Satna, airlifted to AIIMS Delhi
Police said the accused kidnapped the girl who was sleeping in the courtyard of her family’s house in Madhya Pradesh’s Satna.
A four-year-old girl was allegedly raped in Madhya Pradesh’s Satna district on Sunday, police said, days after another minor was sexually assaulted and similarly left for dead in Mandsaur town, sparking outrage and protests in the state.
The girl was flown to Delhi and admitted to the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) in a “critical” condition. “She was admitted to the hospital at 7 pm. Her condition is critical and she may undergo surgery soon,” the Press Trust of India cited a source as saying.
Satna’s superintendent of police Rajesh Hingankar said 27-year-old Mahendra Singh Gond, who works as a guest teacher in the local school in Parasmania Pathar under Uchera police station, confessed to his crime and has been arrested.
Police said Gond knew the girl’s father and even chatted with him on the night of the incident. They added Gond kidnapped the girl, who was sleeping in the courtyard of her family’s house, when the father went to relieve himself around midnight.
Gond, police said, took her to a jungle around two kilometres away, raped her and left her under a tree as he thought she had died. The girl, who usually sleeps with her mother and younger sister inside the house, asked to sleep in the courtyard to which her mother agreed.
When the father returned he thought that the girl had gone inside the house but when he checked with his wife, he realised their daughter was missing. He started looking for the girl along with other villagers and found her in a critical condition the next morning.
They rushed her to the local hospital from where she was taken to Satna district hospital.
Sources said that the victim’s father and some villagers went looking for Gond as they suspected that he could be behind the crime. Gond started running when he saw the villagers approaching him but was caught. He confessed to his crime and was handed over to the police.
Hinganka said that the charge sheet in the case would be filed within seven days. A special team has been formed which would be headed by Nagod sub-divisional police officer Prabha Singh Kiro.
The eight-year-old girl from Mandsaur was gangraped on June 26 by two men, who slit her throat and left her for dead. Doctors treating her said an object – possibly a rod or a wooden stick – had been inserted into her in such a manner brutal that her entrails had come out. The girl, who has been in the hospital since being found, had to undergo two surgeries.
According to government figures, a child is sexually abused every 15 minutes in India.
Figures show Madhya Pradesh is one of the most unsafe and dangerous places for women in the country as one woman is raped in the central state almost every two hours.
There were 5,300 incidents of rape in 2017 up from 4,882 cases recorded in the previous year, registering an increase of nearly 8%, according to the State Crime Records Bureau.
