A 12-year-old, Std VII student from Saki Naka, who was being repeatedly raped since she was 10, finally registered a police case against her alleged abusers on Monday.
Among the accused is her cousin with whose family she had been living ever since her parents divorced in 2005. Some of the men named in her complaint are from the same locality; one is even a 71-year-old. Others are friends of her cousin and a few people who visited her aunt’s canteen.
In her complaint, the child says she was first raped by her cousin in 2008. She said, “I was studying in the mezzanine floor, when my cousin Dhawal Bapat, 21, came and thrust a knife at me. He then started forcing himself on me. She added, “When I resisted he said he would kill me if I did not cooperate.”
The child says Dhawal, who works with a dry fruit merchant in Navi Mumbai, continued to rape her whenever there was no one at home.
According to the complaint, one day, when the girl was going to school, Dhawal and his friend Raju Sharma, 22, forcibly took her to a lodge in Kurla where they raped her and filmed the act on their cell phones. This was, allegedly, later used by the duo to blackmail the girl into succumbing to their demands. Police suspect that the clip was spread to others, who threatened the girl and raped her.
Police have arrested four people - Jamuna Prasad Sharma, 71,
Jitendra Yadav, 25, Vinod Yadav, 27, and Premchand Panit, 35.
The other accused - Dhawal Bapat, 21, Raju Sharma, 22, Guru Sharma, 24, Vakil, 30 and Rajesh Sharma, 40, are absconding.
How the case came to light: The child’s aunt received a call two weeks ago from the girl’s uncle saying the child was being threatened and raped by several people. The shocked aunt immediately took the child their native Bhuj in Gujarat. But this did not stop her abusers. On March 18, Raju Sharma, called on the aunt’s cell phone and threatened the child. Senior police inspector Samadhan Dhanedhar of the Saki Naka police station said, “Raju said he would kill the aunt if the child did not return. That’s when the girl told her aunt and uncle about the abuse and they approached the Bhuj police.” The officer added, “The Bhuj police brought them to Mumbai and we registered a case against the accused.”
Neighbours speak: Residents of the chawl are shocked to learn about the abuse. One of the neighbours said, “A few days ago the child told us she was going to perform some puja at her native place. We had no idea about her ordeal.”
Another neighbour said, “I do not know why Jamuna Sharma has been arrested. He is a respected person in our locality. He has grandchildren. Charges against him are baseless.” Maya Singh, Sharma’s daughter said, “My father used to treat the girl like his granddaughter. I don’t know why she is framing my father in such a heinous crime.”
