The blatant act was committed in Maharashtra on November 13 2021, with a married, minor girl. The girl was held captive for six months and given the temptation of a job with pay but fraudulently.
The girl child was sexually assaulted, molested, beaten, and repeatedly raped by almost 400 men, including a police officer. She suffered pregnancy and physical and mental trauma. The incident took place in the Beed, Maharashtra.
The case has come to light after multiple efforts by the girl to complain. All her previous efforts proved futile since the Police officers were reluctant and refused to take any action. It was only last week when the child’s efforts bore fruit, and finally, the policemen registered the complaint on her behalf.
In the complaint, the victim says that with her mother passing away two years ago, her father forcefully married her and started living with her in-laws. Soon after, she started getting harassed by her husband and father-in-law.
Failing to resist anymore, she ran and left her in-laws’ house and returned to her paternal home. Here she was unwelcomed by her father, who refused to take care of her leaving her homeless.
The teenager started looking for alternate means of survival to support her stomach and hence searched for jobs with a desire to earn some money to sustain herself.
Even after relentless efforts to find a job, the girl couldn’t get one and then sorted to begging at the bus stand in Ambajogai, Maharasgtra, where two men tempted her to give her a job and living. They instead lay hold of timidness and helplessness and started allegedly abusing her.
The two men held her imprisoned and, along with hundreds of men, brutally raped her. The most shocking fact was where the girl, in her statement, talked about a Police Officer who didn’t help in rescuing her, instead raped her. In her statement to the Child Welfare Committee, the girl said that she tried to file a case in Maharashtra at Ambajogai Police Station, but no one helped her.
Instead, a policeman allegedly took advantage of the situation and raped her. She said, “I have been abused by many people. I went to Ambajogai police station several times to file a complaint, but the Police took no action against the culprits. Instead, I was harassed by a policeman.”
This incident is currently under serious consideration of the Child Welfare Committee, which is looking after the abortion of the girl. The Beed, Maharashtra Superintendent Raja Ramasamy has taken up the case, and the investigations have begun.
So far, four people have already been arrested, and the rest of the investigation is underway to catch the culprits. A case under the Prohibition of Child Marriage Act has been filed against her father and relatives for arranging child marriage.
The accused have been booked under the POCSO and other relevant sections of the Indian Penal Code for rape and molestation. The case is being probed further to the concerned authorities.
The survivor’s condition is pathetic in terms of the amount of physical and mental exploitation faced by her. She also got impregnated by one of her rapists. The Child Welfare Committee is under the process of aborting the foetus so that the girl’s reproductive health could be restored since she had suffered extreme physical ill-treatment.
The increasing number of cases against women is a growing concern, yet nothing has been done so far. The Mumbai Police is now planning to open up counselling booths for women in need in every area to control the unattended events of violence, rape and other criminal offences.
Nevertheless, there is an urgent need to identify the culprits and strengthen the penalization for such cases to reduce horrifying events with innocent people.
