New Delhi: He allegedly sexually assaulted her multiple times over a period of three months, impregnated her and then conspired with his wife to terminate the pregnancy by giving her abortion pills — this is what the 17-year-old class 10 student has said in her statement under section 164 of the Code of Criminal Procedure (CrPC) recorded in front of a magistrate Monday, sources in the Delhi Police told ThePrint.
On Monday, a deputy director in the Delhi government’s Department of Women and Child Development and his wife, a homemaker, were arrested. Charged with raping a minor, the 51-year-old senior officer has been suspended by Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal. He had earlier also served as the superintendent of the Juvenile Justice Board and as officer on special duty (OSD) to the minister for women and child development.
Speaking to ThePrint, a senior police officer said, “She (the minor) revealed in her 164 statement that the accused raped her multiple times between November 2020 to January 2021. She used to call him ‘mama’ (a maternal uncle). His wife fed her abortion pills.”
The class 10 student was enrolled in an open school. Her father, a friend of the accused, had died on 1 October, 2020, from a heart ailment.
“The accused’s family and the victim’s family have known each other for around 20 years and belong to Jharkhand,” a source in Delhi Police told ThePrint.
“They also used to visit the same church. The victim’s father and the accused, both Delhi government employees, were friends. After her father’s death, her mother had dropped her off at the house of the accused, whom the girl addressed as ‘mama’. The girl’s mother has said that she did so because the child was all alone in the house and would get some company with the kids.”
The accused and his wife have two children.
The minor however told her mother sometime in January 2021 that she wanted to return but never narrated her ordeal. The mother at the time used to live in Usmanpur but later shifted to Burari where the accused live. “It was only recently, when the child started suffering panic and anxiety attacks that the matter came to light. During her treatment and psyche evaluation, there was a pattern. All her statements and revelations were directed towards this mama and that’s how the family found out,” the source said. “After detailed investigation, the accused were arrested.”
The minor is currently undergoing treatment at a Delhi hospital.
The FIR was lodged on 13 August in Burari police station under relevant sections of the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act, and sections 376 2f (being a guardian, commits rape on such 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 120 B (criminal conspiracy) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC).
(Edited by Zinnia Ray Chaudhuri)
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