BHOPAL: A 50-year-old government school teacher was arrested on Thursday for raping a 10-year-old girl in Berasia, on the outskirts of Bhopal.
According to the girl, he had first sexually assaulted her in March this year but kept quiet as she was in shock and didn’t really understand what had happened with her. She was also conscious of the fact that their entire locality depended on him to get water — everyone draws water from the borewell in his home.
On September 1, he again raped her when she had gone to fetch water from his house. She says he locked her up inside a toilet and assaulted her, gagging her so that his elderly parents, who live with him, heard nothing.
This time, the child sustained severe internal injuries and her health began deteriorating. She was taken to hospital, where she finally mustered courage to tell her parents that her illness was due to “whatever the teacher did to her”. When she narrated her ordeal, her parents were horrified and immediately went to police.
The Class 6 girl described both incidents to police. “On March 3, when she had gone to fetch water, the accused asked her to close the main gate to ‘avoid crowding’. When she closed the gates, he grabbed her hand and dragged her into the toilet where he molested her,” said SI Suryawanshi, adding that he threatened her not to tell anyone about it.
Terrified, she kept quiet. Six months later, the teacher repeated the horror, this time even more brutally.
“A week later, the child began suffering unbearable pain. Her family members thought she would recover with time, but when her condition continued to deteriorate, they grew alarmed and took her to hospital. That is where she told them,” said SI Suryawanshi.
(The victim's identity has not been revealed to protect her privacy as per Supreme court directives on cases related to sexual assault)
