In a heinous case of child sexual abuse, an 11-year-old girl was allegedly raped on several occasions by four members of her family, including her father, older teenage brother and paternal grandfather, according to a First Information Report (FIR) filed at Bund Garden Police Station in Pune on March 18.
Police officials said the crimes were committed over five years starting 2017 when the girl was eight.
“The girl comes from an impoverished background, a (daily wage) labourer’s family. The case is under investigation and no arrest has been made till now,” deputy commissioner of Police (Zone II) Sagar Patil said.
According to a senior police official involved in the investigation, the incident came to light when the survivor narrated her experience during a seminar organised by her school on “good touch and bad touch” — a common educational programme employed by educators to acquaint young children with aspects related to sexuality, including abuse.
The school counsellor informed the school which in turn approached the police, police inspector (crime) Ashwini Satpute said. The FIR was lodged based on the counsellor’s complaint. HT has seen a copy of the daily crime report (DCR) based on the FIR.
A case has been registered against four members of the survivor’s family under various sections of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) and the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act.
Sections 376 (a) (b), 375, 377 of the IPC and sections 3(b), 4, 5 (m) (n), 8 and 12 of POCSO have been applied against the 14-year-old brother, 45-year-old father, 60-year-old grandfather and 25-year-old uncle.
Some of these sections carry a maximum sentence of life imprisonment. The teenager will be tried under the Juvenile Justice act, which applies to offenders who are below 18 years of age.
The survivor hails from Bihar. Her father is a daily wage labourer and mother does odd jobs. They are currently residing in Pune.
“The incident came to light when the girl opened up during a ‘good touch and bad touch’ session in her school. Her ordeal has been going on for the last five years,” said Satpute. The survivor reportedly kept the abuse hidden from her mother.
“The girl’s elder brother started sexually assaulting her around November 2020. Her grandfather and a distantly-related uncle used to touch her inappropriately,” Satpute said, adding that the father sexually assaulted his daughter first, in 2017, while the family was still in Bihar.
Satpute said that since all incidents occurred separately, a case of gang rape has not been registered.
“The case has been detected through a conversation on “good touch bad touch” introduced in schools five years ago. We need to educate parents about this as they don’t have much knowledge about it. The school must investigate the mental well-being of under-18 girls by talking regularly to their parents and guardians at least once a month to detect such cases sooner,” child psychologist Kamlesh Sonawane said.
The Crime in India 2020 report brought out by the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) last year revealed that 38.8% of all crimes against children registered in the country pertained to sexual assault — there was also a rise in the number of sexual assault cases registered under the POCSO Act from 2019. Further, in 96% of the cases of penetrative sexual assault and aggravated sexual assault, the offender was a person known to the child.
