Viswa Bharati Scholar Will Spend Life in Prison For Raping Minor

The accused who sexually abused and blackmailed the victim for four months, was also her local guardian.

• A PhD scholar of Visva Bharati University in Santiniketan, West Bengal, Mohammed Safikul Islam, was sentenced to life imprisonment for raping and blackmailing a minor girl student of Visva Bharati Higher Secondary School on 2 June.
  
• Safikul was slapped with charges under Section 4 of Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act. In addition to life in jail, Safikul was ordered to pay a fine of Rs 10,000. West Bengal government has been ordered by the court to pay the girl Rs 5 lakh as compensation.
  
• The girl from Dhaka in Bangladesh was a student of class XII. She was taken to the rented house of the PhD scholar – who was her local guardian – on 5 August 2014 and raped. Islam then took photographs of her in various compromising positions with his mobile phone and blackmailed her not to make the crime public, otherwise the photographs would be circulated.
  
• For four consecutive months, the man sexually abused the girl in his rented house. Eventually, she gathered the courage to lodge a complaint with the Santiniketan police station on 5 December, 2014.
  

(With agency inputs.)