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A nine-year-old girl who studied at a private school in Adarsh Nagar was sexually assaulted over a period of one-and-a-half years by the van driver who brought her back home from the institute every afternoon, Delhi Police said on Monday. The accused, a 35-year-old resident of Mukundpur, was arrested on Sunday, additional deputy commissioner of police (north) Nithya Radhakrishnan confirmed. HT is not naming the accused as his name could be used to identify the minor victim.
A senior officer probing the case said the matter came to light on April 3, when the girl, a Class 4 student, confided to her mother that she had been sexually assaulted. After a brief consultation within the family, the mother approached police to file a complaint on April 5. “The girl’s mother said her daughter travels to her school in a private van.
She said on April 3, the girl was unusually quiet when she returned from school. When the mother asked her, she didn’t say anything. However, she later told the mother that she had been molested,” the officer said, declining to be named.
Police said the girl also revealed that the accused had been touching her inappropriately for many months, and said that the first time he sexually assaulted her was in December 2023, when he was dropping her home from school. “The girl said that the accused had threatened to harm her if she said anything to anyone, because of which she did not share her ordeal. However, on April 3, she couldn’t take it anymore and gathered the courage to tell her mother,” the officer said.
Based on the mother’s complaint, a case under Bharatiya Nyay Samhita sections 74 (assault on a woman), 75 (sexual harassment),115(2) (causing hurt), and 351(2) (criminal intimidation), as well as section 10 of the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (Pocso) Act was registered at the Burari police station on April 5. The officer said the girl’s medical examination was conducted in presence of her mother and members of an NGO counselled her. During the probe, a notice was given to the accused to join the investigation, and he was arrested on Sunday.
However, because the punishment in all sections levelled against him amounted to a jail term of less than seven years, he was granted bail. An activist from the NGO, on condition of anonymity, told HT that the girl is very scared. “She knew what was happening to her but she was very scared to share it with anyone because the accused had threatened her.
Without going into details, I would say that she felt extremely uneasy during the last day when the accused molested her. That’s when she told her mother,” the activist said..
