In an attempt to avoid sexual assault, a 12-year-old girl jumped off the ledge of a four-storey building on Tuesday, 3 April in Nala Sopara, Mumbai.
According to Mumbai Mirror, the girl survived the fall due to the fast thinking of three auto-garage workers – who caught her in a safety-net – but contracted a fracture in the back due to the impact.
The auto-garage workers were making a hood for an auto-rickshaw out of the cloth, when they saw a man asking the minor, who lived in that locality, for directions to an adjacent under-construction building.
According to the workers, the man had managed to convince the minor to take him to the address. A few minutes later, one of her shoes fell off the terrace of the building onto the workers.
The report mentions that the workers, suspecting that she was about to jump, quickly raised the alarm and spread the cloth they were working on as a safety-net, in order to catch her.
As a result of this, once the minor did jump, the cloth arrested her fall. The report further quotes the workers saying that she was instantly rushed to the hospital, where the doctors noted that she had suffered a fracture in her back.
The minor reportedly told the police that she had jumped off the building in order to attempt being sexually assaulted by the man. According to the report, a case has been filed against the man, whose identity is still unknown, under the POCSO Act as well as sections 363(kidnapping) and 354B (assault or use of criminal force to woman with intent to disrobe) of the IPC.
Investigations are currently underway and CCTV camera footage of the area is being examined, in order to identify the man, the police told Mumbai Mirror.
The incident comes a few days before a woman was molested on a local train in Mumbai, with a video of the incident having gone viral, showing a man beating up the woman, while the other passengers stood by. The man was later arrested by the Mumbai police at Dadar.
(With inputs from Mumbai Mirror.)
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