(Trigger warning: Mentions of child sexual abuse.)
The Delhi Police has booked a senior official in the government's Women and Child Development Department for allegedly raping his deceased friend's 16-year-old daughter for several months between 2020 and 2021.
The Burari police station registered a First Information Report (FIR) against the official under several sections of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) and the stringent Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act.
What happened? According to the police, the girl is a Class 12 student at a school in North Delhi. The accused and the girl's family met three years ago.
When the girl lost her father in 2020, the accused allegedly offered to take the minor into his care. Her mother agreed as they were friends, the police told The Quint.
The minor stayed with the accused between October 2020 to February 2021, during which she was allegedly raped several times, the police said.
"She was sexually harassed, physically molested, and repeatedly raped by the accused under whose care she was in," a police official told The Quint.
When the teen became pregnant, the accused told his wife about the matter. The wife then asked their son to get medicines and terminated the minor's pregnancy at home, the girl told police in her complaint in the FIR.
How Did the Incident Come to Light?
The girl's mother came to know about the alleged rape almost two years after it happened.
Police officials told The Quint that the matter came to light when the minor recently narrated the incident to a counsellor at a hospital where she was admitted to following an anxiety attack.
The matter is being investigated and the minor is being treated in the hospital, they added. The girl's statement is yet to be recorded in front of a magistrate. The police said they will record her statement before the court soon and then question the official.
What does the FIR say? An FIR under sections 376(2)(f) (being a guardian, commits rape on woman), 506 (criminal intimidation), 509 (act intended to insult the modesty of a woman), 323 (causing hurt), 313 (causing miscarriage without woman's consent), and 120B (criminal conspiracy) of the Indian Penal Code and sections 6/21 of the POCSO Act has been lodged against the accused and his wife.
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