A shocking crime has recently surfaced with the arrest of a Ghaziabad woman for torturing her daughter to hide the sexual abuse and assault she and her brother faced at the hands of the woman’s male friend. The mother had tried to cover up the repeated rape and also tried to force her daughter into prostitution. Her older son, only thirteen-years-old, had left home earlier. He had also been sexually assaulted by his mother’s friend. The perpetrator has been identified to be Raju, arrested alongside the children’s mother from the Loni Border Police Station in Ghaziabad. 

Minor victim revealed rape and sexual abuse

On 20th January, a young girl— ten years of age— was found roaming the streets of Delhi all alone and untended when the Delhi Police forces took her into custody. Upon being entrusted to the Child Welfare Committee, the subsequent medical examination of the minor victim revealed that she’d been repeatedly raped and sexually abused. No missing complaint had been filed for the kid in the following months since her disappearance. 

According to Assistant Commissioner of Police (Loni), Bhaskar Sharma, the girl was terrified of her abuser. She claimed that she had been abused by her stepfather, but upon further investigation it was revealed that her father had died four years ago and both the children had been living with their grandparents since. According to the NDTV report, her mother had taken them both home last year and it was here that all these horrific crimes had been committed. 

Aside from the rape itself, her mother and Raju would proceed to torture her to cover up the crime. They would even threaten her with pliers, hoping to intimidate her into keeping quiet about the assault. Though the girl’s brother had left home earlier, the girl’s last straw had been when she found that her mother was planning to push her into prostitution once she got older, a profession that her mother had entered after her father died. It was then that she had fled home to escape the repetitive abuse in fear and been found by the Delhi Police.

sexual abuse
image: India.Com

This is a startling case. A mother herself complicit in the horrific abuse of her daughter in a time where fingers have been raised on the topic of Women's safety in India. It is frightening to imagine the circumstances of the children, but the truth is that many such cases fester in the bones of this country still. In May 2022, a 11 year old girl had been sexually assaulted by four members of her family. In February, earlier this year, a class XI girl had accused her brother and his friend on two separate occassions. There are many more cases of the like.

This case had been initially registered by the Delhi Police in January. Another had been lodged in April, at the Loni Border Police Station. 

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