Family allege that one more had role in 6-yr-old’s rape; cops deny
NEW DELHI: A day after a sixyear-old Dalit girl was raped, allegedly by her 34-year-old neighbour, in east Delhi’s Trilokpuri area, her family claimed another man was involved in the crime. On Thursday, they sat outside the Mayur Vihar police station where the case was registered, demanding the arrest of this other person, but the police ruled out the role of another perpetrator.
The family said the girl turned six on Tuesday, but couldn’t celebrate her birthday with friends as her grandmother was unwell. She was excited about showing her gifts to her friends on Wednesday and stepped out of home right after lunch, said her family members.
As she did, a cable operator in the neighbourhood, whom the police later identified as Sammugan, offered to buy her chocolates and asked her to accompany him to an empty room nearby where he raped her.
When she returned in the afternoon, she was wounded and crying.
“She kept saying that she fell and hurt herself as the man had threatened to harm her further if she told anybody else what he did to her. She was scared, but when we consoled her, she narrated the entire episode to us,” said the girl’s grandmother as she sat outside the Mayur Vihar police station with at least 50 neighbours on Thursday.
On Wednesday, too, the family and nearly 200 other people staged a protest outside the police station and didn’t relent until Sammugan was arrested and booked under Section 6 of the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (Pocso) Act and various sections of the Indian Penal Code as well as the SC/ST
Act.
The girl was taken to Lal Bahadur Shastri Hospital from where she was shifted to AIIMS where her condition was said to be stable.
Her uncle said that she first came to her aunt with her hands still tied behind her back. She didn’t know the man’s name so the police had to show her photographs of neighbours till she identified the cable operator.
The aunt complained about the area becoming very unsafe for women, but said Sammugan, in particular, had a reputation of being a paedophile and a wife beater. “Recently, he (Sammugan) dragged his seven-month pregnant wife out on the road and kicked her in the stomach. Some transpersons who were passing by stopped him. We have heard that he previously assaulted a two-year-old girl as well but it wasn’t reported to the police,” the woman said.
The police, however, contested some of the family’s claims. “It has been ascertained that there was only one person in the room and we have arrested him,” said a senior officer. He added that they have no information about Sammugan assaulting another child in the past.
Meanwhile, Delhi Commission for Women (DCW) and Delhi Commission for Protection of Child Rights (DCPCR) issued notices to the police on Thursday. Anurag Kundu, chairman of DCPCR, expressed concern about the growing crimes against women and children. “I feel terrible about the state of this city and how things keep going downhill. There is a considerable delay in filing complete chargesheets and that needs to be looked into,” Kundu said.
Later in the day, the Union ministry of home affairs said that the present case and the August 1 gang-rape and murder of a nine-year-old Dalit girl in Delhi Cantonment will be heard by special fast-track courts.
“As per the directions of the Union home minister Amit Shah, ministry of home affairs reviewed the rape and murder case of a girl child in Nangal area of Delhi and rape of a girl child in Mayur Vihar with Delhi Police,” a home ministry spokesperson wrote on microblogging platform Twitter on Thursday.
In another tweet, the spokesperson said the Delhi Police is committed to filing the charge sheet in court “within 30 days of registration of the case, so that the trial of these cases can start at the earliest.”