Lifeguard held for rape of 3-yr-old girl in Gr Noida school
NOIDA: Police have arrested a man who worked as a lifeguard at the swimming pool of a reputed private school in Greater Noida on Saturday for the alleged rape of a three-and-ahalf-year-old girl on the school’s premises.
Chandi Das, 42, a native of Burdwan in West Bengal, was arrested by Surajpur police on Saturday after the girl’s parents lodged a complaint alleging that he committed the crime on Thursday morning.
The victim told her parents about the incident after she felt pain in her abdomen and her private parts while attending to nature’s call. “Our daughter complained of severe body pain after arriving from school on Thursday afternoon. We took her to Guru Tegh Bahadur Hospital in Delhi for a medico-legal test. The test indicated an issue which she suffered on her body. We took her next day to the school where she pointed out to Chandi Das and started crying,” the girl’s father said in his complaint. “Other staff of the school also told us that the lifeguard had done some bad things to our daughter on Thursday,” the complaint said.
The girl, who was enrolled in the nursery class this year, lives with her parents in a residential pocket of Greater Noida.
Her father works as a general manager in a private company and her mother is a teacher in another Greater Noida-based school).
The police said that they had a medical test done on the girl that found signs of force having been applied on her private parts.
The police picked up Das from his temporary accommodation in a Greater Noida residential society.
“The parents of the victim girl lodged a complaint with us on Friday night and we picked up Das on Saturday morning. The victim’s medical report has shown signs of ‘bad touch’. The parents have demanded strictest legal punishment for the accused. We have booked Das under Indian Penal code sections 376 for rape and also levied sections 7 and 8 of the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act,” said Manoj Kumar Pant, station house officer at the Surajpur police station.
The rape suspect claimed that he had been working as a lifeguard in the school for the past 13 years.“i have been working for the past 13 years and I have never been accused of any such act. The allegations are false and police can check the close circuit television footage of the school campus. This will prove my innocence,” Das said.
School staff claimed that Das also used to teach horse-riding to children and that he had been a part of the school for at least a decade.
“We have never heard of any complaint against him in the past so many years,” said a security guard at the school.
The school management defended the lifeguard and termed the allegations false and baseless.
“Recent media reports claiming that a four-year-old girl student being raped at our school are totally baseless and without any proof. He was not our employee and was a lifeguard at the swimming pool. The alleged incident occurred on Thursday when the girl child reported pain in her abdomen to her parents. On receiving a verbal complaint from them about a purported sexual assault on the child by the lifeguard, the school administration swung into action and immediately coordinated with the local police and got the accused taken into custody,” said the school principal.