An eleven-year-old Dalit girl was raped, allegedly by two adolescent boys, when she was in her house in Thalainayar block in Nagapattinam on Friday. Harrowed by the experience, and physically hurt, the girl informed her parents only on Saturday morning. The police detained the minor boys on rape charge.
The girl, of Puthur panchayat here, was in her house preparing for her exam scheduled for noon on Friday, when the two boys, aged 17 and 15, residents of the area, entered her house. According to the girl, she was carried inside the house, held behind a partition, gagged and repeatedly assaulted. The girl’s six-year-old brother, who was sent out of the house by the boys, screamed for help.
Narrating the incident to The Hindu , the girl, who suffers from epilepsy and is too fragile, wanted an assurance if “all was right” with her. Fearing a backlash, she had hidden her skirt under a basket.
Her parents, agricultural wage labourers, returned home in the evening and saw their daughter looking unwell.
“This (Saturday) morning, unable to bear the physical pain, she summoned courage to tell us,” said her father.
She was admitted to the Thiruthuraipoondi government hospital here. The girl was given an antibiotic injection, and a painkiller, after she complained of severe pain, a doctor told The Hindu .
However, no swab samples or the girls clothes were collected. The duty doctor said swab samples and material evidence would have to be collected by the police. According to the Thalainayar inspector, a magistrate would have to give the order for sample collection.
According to the girl’s father, the president of Puthur Panchayat and the Village Administrative Officer contacted him over phone in the hospital and asked him to refrain from filing a police complaint. They wanted to “sort out the matter” and promised that they would bear the expenses for the girl.
“I asked them if they would say the same thing, if she had been their daughter. I asked them to come to the hospital, look at my daughter’s face, and repeat what they said.”
The Thalainayar police produced the boys, a X standard dropout and a blacksmith, before the Child Welfare Committee in Nagapattinam late in the evening. They were remanded and sent to a juvenile home in Thanjavur.
