New Delhi: A 10-year-old girl and her 13-year-old brother were sexually assaulted for a year by their mother’s boyfriend and the girl was in danger of being forced into sex work, according to the police, who investigated the case after the girl ran away from her Ghaziabad home and was rescued earlier this year.
Every time the man, a pimp, sexually assaulted the two children, the mother would torture them to force their silence, the Ghaziabad police said. When the 10-year-old ran away, the mother did not file a missing persons report.
Both the man and the mother are currently behind bars, with an FIR lodged under Indian Penal Code sections for rape and the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act. According to the police, a medical examination of the girl has confirmed rape.
After their father’s death, the children and their mother had lived with their maternal grandparents in Firozabad for some time. However, they soon moved into rented accommodation in Ghaziabad facilitated by the mother’s partner, a former driver who was now a pimp. It was at his instance that the mother, who had worked as a scrap dealer earlier, began to do sex work.
Assistant Commissioner of Police (Loni) Bhaskar Sharma told ThePrint, “The mother would torture the children if they protested against the sexual assault.”
He added that she “would starve them and beat them up. They were threatened with iron rods and pliers and knives.”
The girl was first found in Delhi’s Sarai Kale Khan area on 29 January this year after she managed to flee. However, according to the police, for a while, she kept changing her story and later kept saying she couldn’t remember the locality where they lived.
“Initially, she kept telling the police she came from Agra, and didn’t mention Ghaziabad. She is very traumatised and scared of [the man] and her mother. Immense fear was instilled in her. She started opening up gradually,” Sharma said.
The Delhi Police contacted the Ghaziabad police and informed them about the matter. It was finally in April, that the Ghaziabad police managed to zero down on the area and an FIR was lodged.
The ACP said both the mother and the man “have accepted their crimes”. The brother’s statement is also being recorded.
Also read: 5-yr-old raped, murdered in Delhi’s Bawana — ‘throat slit, head bludgeoned, body dumped in factory’