COIMBATORE: Five people, two of them minor boys, were arrested on Tuesday for raping and impregnating a 14-year-old girl from a village near Pollachi. Another accused in the case is on the run.
The Pollachi all-woman police said the girl, a Class X student, was alone at her house most of the time, as her parents used to go for daily wage work. “She was in love with a 16-year-old neighbour boy, a Class XI student, and they had physical relationship. He boasted about his sexual encounters with the girl among his friends, who started to threaten and rape her for two months,” an investigation officer said.
The officer said while one of the accused was the girl’s uncle, the remaining were her neighbours. “They raped her separately on different occasions in January and February. The girl was taken to Pollachi government hospital on Monday evening with severe abdominal pain. Doctors found the minor was five months pregnant and alerted us.”
Preliminary inquiry revealed that the girl was raped by her lover, another 17-year-old boy, who is a wall painter, 19-year-old S Nagaraj, 20-year-old T Praveen, 19-year-old V Muthumurugan, who were daily wagers, and the girl’s uncle M Maharajothi, 31, a welder. “They raped the girl from three different places,” the officer said.
Based on the girl’s complaint, police registered a case against the six under Sections 5(g) (gang penetrative sexual assault), (j)(ii), (l)(n) read with 6 of the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (Pocso) Act and Section 506 (i) of the Indian Penal Code and arrested five of them on Tuesday. “Praveen is still at large. We have launched a manhunt for him,” the officer said.
The arrested five were, meanwhile, produced before the special court for Pocso cases and lodged in jail under judicial custody at night.
(The victim's identity has not been revealed to protect her privacy as per Supreme court directives on cases related to sexual assault)
