Raped every night under a bridge: Teen recalls horror

LALITPUR: “She couldn’t sleep. She wouldn’t eat. She was very frightened and appeared to have lost all hope.”

According to counsellors who spoke to her, this was the condition of a 13-year-old girl, who was first allegedly raped by four men in Bhopal and then sexually assaulted by a police officer in Uttar Pradesh’s Lalitpur district, when she was sent to childcare workers on April 30. The child had been through hell, they said.

She was first abducted by four men from her home in Lalitpur district on April 22 and gangraped for four days. Then, when she was brought back, the station house officer (SHO) of Pali police station, Tilakdhari Saroj, allegedly raped her on April 27, when she went to lodge a complaint. Three days later, she was handed over to a non-governmental organisation, who found her traumatised, and started piecing together the horrors of the previous week.

“When she was escorted to us by two police personnel that afternoon, she appeared very frightened but just wouldn’t speak to us. Once the police left, and we began prodding her as part of counselling, she began opening up,” said a counsellor who spoke at length to the survivor.

She began with April 22, when Chandan, Raj Bhan, Mahendra Chaurasia and one of her cousins abducted her from her home and took her to Bhopal. The girl told counsellors that none of them had a place to stay. Police officials told HT that the men didn’t check into a hotel because they wanted to remain untraceable. “In the daytime, they would loiter on the streets near the railway station, and nights would be spent under a bridge, where the men would take turns to rape her while one of them would keep guard,” said the counsellor quoted above.

The NGO also quoted the girl as saying that another accused, Raj Bhan, carried a gun and threatened to kill her parents if she put up a fight.

“She only remembers a bridge, some streets, sounds of trains and azaan from a mosque,” the counsellor said, requesting anonymity.

The counsellors remember the survivor being persistent about naming SHO Saroj. “A dozen times she told me that the SHO raped her, but she never mentioned any other policeman,” the counsellor said.

Only after revealing her harrowing experience did the survivor finally sleep. “The stressed child slept around 6 pm and woke up only at 7 am,” her counsellor said. On April 30, the NGO counsellors called her parents. Her stepfather, a labourer from a Scheduled Caste background, said: “She said she didn’t have the face to tell us what occurred with her. She just directed us to the counsellors.”

On May 2, the survivor and her counsellors met the SP. Over the next couple of days, the entire police station was suspended, an FIR registered, Saroj and five suspects arrested. Saroj, who absconded for two days before he was arrested on Wednesday, said he was framed and the other accused have denied the allegations. “It is all a blackmail tactic of the girl’s mother,” Raj Bhan’s father, Dayalu, told HT.

AN ACCUSED CARRIED A GUN AND THREATENED TO KILL THE GIRL’S PARENTS IF SHE PUT UP A FIGHT