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17-year-old US national raped in Gurgaon guesthouse
A 17-year-old US national was allegedly raped in a Gurgaon guest house by a 21-year-old man, also an expat, whom she had met on a social networking site, police said Thursday.
A 17-year-old US national was allegedly raped in a Gurgaon guest house by a 21-year-old man, also an expat, whom she had met on a social networking site, police said Thursday.
Though the Class 9 student and her mother, a senior executive with a multi-national firm in Gurgaon, didn’t file a complaint, a case of rape was registered after the doctors at AIIMS, Delhi, where the girl was rushed on Monday night, alerted the Gurgaon Police.
"The medical examination at AIIMS confirmed rape. We have registered a case on the basis of the report," ACP (crime) Rajesh Kumar said.
Law requires police to register a case as soon as they get to know of a cognisable offence. In cases of sexual assault against minors, information from any source was enough for police to set the law in motion, child rights lawyer Anant Asthana told HT.
“In her statement to the duty magistrate on Wednesday, the girl requested that no harm be done to the accused,” Kumar said.
She also refused to share the details of the Delhi-based man, whom she befriended on Facebook a few months ago, he said.
The girl came to India eight months ago and lives in a gated community in a tony Gurgaon neighbourhood. She was in constant touch with the man, who has also been charged under the stringent protection of children from sexual offences act, and had gone out with him on at least three occasions.
On Monday, he picked her up from home at around 9.30am and took her to Balaji Guest House in Sector 38. Footage from CCTV cameras show them entering and leaving the building.
The girl was struggling to walk when the man dropped her back. "She was bleeding and in pain when her mother got home in the evening,” Kumar said.
Initially she refused to talk but when her mother pressed for answers, she broke down. The mother rushed her to AIIMS. When the police got there on Tuesday, they had left the hospital -- against doctors’ advice, Kumar said.
The mother was reluctant to talk to the police, who got her address from the hospital, but later agreed, Kumar said.
The police, who only know the man’s first name from the Facebook profile, believe he is from an African country. The girl didn’t know what he did for a living or where he lived. He was a frequent visitor to the guest house -- a signboard describes it as a paying-guest accommodation -- and often had women guests, the staff told the police.
"We don’t have many details about him. The mobile numbers provided by the girl are switched off,” he said. The cyber crime cell teams were trying to trace the last location of the phones.
