Mumbai: Acting on an FIR registered by the authorities of a south Mumbai-based school, the Cuffe Parade police on Wednesday arrested the father of one of its students, a 16-year-old girl, for allegedly raping her over the last few months.
The police said the accused had perpetrated the crime at times when his wife was not at home. The survivor, who studies in Class 10, had not told her mother about her situation, as the accused had allegedly warned her that if she disclosed anything to anybody, he would kill her mother and her.
However, the survivor spoke up about her 40-year-old father’s alleged crime to her class teacher during counselling sessions organised by the school’s authorities to deal with “sudden behavioural changes” in her, said DCP (Zone 1) Manoj Kumar Sharma. The police has booked the accused under section 376 of the Indian Penal Code and sections 4 and 8 of the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act.
The school registered a complaint at Cuffe Parade police station against the father on Tuesday. The police has recorded the statements of the survivor and her school’s class teacher-cum-counsellor.
Mr Sharma added, “The accused had been raping the girl for the past few months. The mother of the minor had no clue about the rape.”
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In 2016, 908 cases of child sex abuse were registered in Mumbai. Education activist Jayan Jain said, “Nowadays the concept of good touch and bad touch has diminished. The good touch is when a person touches on the cheek and palm, but a bad touch is when the other person tries to touch the private parts of the body, making the person uncomfortable.”
