A 14-year-old boy living in an orphanage in the Walled City of Delhi has been apprehended for allegedly sexually abusing a minor girl of the orphanage, who died under mysterious circumstances last December.
The 11-year-old girl, who was abandoned by her mother, had been living in the orphanage for the past one year. She was a Class III student of a school inside the orphanage. The orphanage staff told the police that on December 23 last, she complained of stomach ache and was taken to JPN Hospital. However, her condition deteriorated apparently due to diarrhoea and vomiting and she died the next day.
During post-mortem the doctors discovered that the victim was raped and sodomised. While her viscera was preserved for examination, the police registered a case of rape and unnatural sex. They quizzed the orphanage staffers and the other girls living in the orphanage.
The police found that the girls' and the boys' hostels are located inside the orphanage premises, segregated by a small partition.
The police came across two girls, who revealed that they had seen the boy taking the victim to an un-used bathroom on the first floor of the building where he allegedly raped her on at least two occasions. “The incident took place about two-and-half months before she died,” said a police officer.
The police are awaiting the final post-mortem report to establish the victims' cause of death. “The orphanage is not registered or licensed under the Juvenile Justice Act. In these circumstances, monitoring cannot be done and such incidents can go unreported,” said Lajpat Nagar Child Welfare Committee chairman Raaj Mangal Prasad.
