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Rajasthan judge arrested for ‘sexual assault on boy’: Police
The suspended judge has accused the boy and his family of blackmailing him for money. The Rajasthan high court has ordered a probe into the matter and constituted a team for the purpose
A judge, who was suspended after being booked for allegedly sexually exploiting a 14-year-old boy in Rajasthan’s Bharatpur, was arrested on Wednesday, police said, adding that he was questioned for two days in Jaipur before his arrest.
Bharatpur superintendent of police Devendra Kumar Bishnoi said the judge, identified as Jitendra Singh, has been booked for sodomy under Section 377 (unnatural offences) of the Indian Penal Code and relevant sections of the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (Pocso) Act. The SP added that two other accused, identified as Anshul Soni, the judge’s steno, and Rahul Katara, another staff of the judge, were absconding.
The 52-year-old judge, who presided over a special anti-corruption court in Bharatpur, was arrested after the boy’s mother lodged a complaint against him on Sunday. The judge, however, accused the boy and his family of blackmailing him for money.
The Rajasthan high court, on October 31, suspended the judge and constituted a team to probe into the matter.
According to the police, the minor boy’s mother has alleged that they were being threatened and pressured to withdraw the case. In her complaint, she said the judge met her son at a tennis court and befriended him last month. She has alleged that the special judge and the two other accused had been sexually assaulting her son by intoxicating him with some narcotic substance for the past one month.
She has also claimed that the judge threatened to implicate her and her brother in false cases if they reported the matter, police said.
The family first suspected something was amiss when the boy started to avoid them. He finally narrated his ordeal on October 28, the mother said. She added that when her son did not go to the tennis court the next day, the judge sent his associate, a police officer and a few others to their residence.
“On refusing to send the boy, the judge called us (on phone) later at night, on October 29. When I told him we were aware of what happened, he hung up,” she said. “The next day, the judge, along with one other person, came to our residence, accepted what he had done, and apologised. That same evening, a senior police officer came and threatened us with dire consequences,” the woman said in her complaint.
