‘Accused face threat to life inside jail’ 4-yr-old girl raped in Satna, airlifted to AIIMS in Delhi
A four-year-old girl was allegedly raped in Madhya Pradesh’s Satna district on Sunday, police said, days after another minor was sexually assaulted and similarly left for dead in Mandsaur, sparking outrage and protests across the country.
Satna’s superintendent of police Rajesh Hingankar said 27-year-old Mahendra Singh Gond, a guest teacher at a school in Parasmania Pathar under Uchera police station limits, has been arrested. The senior officer claimed that Gond has confessed to having committed the crime.
Police said Gond knew the child’s father and had spoken to him that evening. The girl, who usually slept with her mother and younger sister inside the house, had asked to sleep in the courtyard with her father that night.
Around midnight, Gond kidnapped the girl when the father went to relieve himself, police said, and took her to a forest area around 2km away where he allegedly raped her and left her near a tree, believing her to be dead.
The family and other villagers searched for the child the entire night and found her in a critical condition the following morning.
They rushed her to the local hospital from where she was taken to Satna district hospital.
Sources said that the victim’s father and some villagers went looking for Gond as they suspected that he could be behind the crime. Gond started running when he saw the villagers approaching him but was caught. He confessed to his crime and was handed over to the police.
Hingankar said the child’s condition is stable but she will be airlifted to New Delhi’s All India Institutes of Medical Sciences for treatment on Tuesday afternoon.
“The state government is providing the air ambulance,” Hingankar said. He added that the charge sheet would be filed within seven days. A special team has been formed which would be headed by Nagod sub-divisional officer Prabha Singh Kiro.
According to government figures, a child is sexually abused every 15 minutes in India.
Figures show Madhya Pradesh is one of the most unsafe and dangerous places for women in the country as one woman is raped in the central state almost every two hours.
There were 5,300 incidents of rape in 2017 up from 4,882 cases recorded in the previous year, registering an increase of nearly 8%, according to the State Crime Records Bureau.
SATNA: