Ittusingh Pawar, main accused in the rape of a minor girl student at an ashram school in Buldhana where he worked as a sweeper, was not officially employed by the school, police said on Saturday.
Pawar was arrested by the Buldhana police on Thursday for alleged repeated sexual assault of the 10-year-old victim over the last two months. Eleven other school functionaries were arrested for not reporting the matter to authorities in spite of having full knowledge about it.
Four more arrests were made in the case, bringing the number of arrested accused to 15. Those arrested on Saturday have been identified as Anil Kokare, Sahebrao Kokare, Mohan Kokare and Balkrishna Waghe. “Kokare was a clerk and would pay Pawar regularly for expenses out of his own pocket. The other three accused are members of the trust that runs the school,” SP (Buldhana) Sanjay Baviskar said.
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According to police sources, interrogation of the arrested accused has revealed that while the school management told everyone that Pawar had been employed as a sweeper, he had been hired on an informal basis to do odd jobs. Mr. Baviskar said, “As Pawar is well-versed with the local dialect and geography, the school management kept him around for odd jobs. As a result, a background check hadn’t been done while employing him, and he was given a free run of the school. There was no mechanism in place to check if he was misusing his freedom on the school premises, or if he was exploiting the students in any way.”
Police said Pawar was entrusted with tasks like ferrying students to and from the school during vacations, acting as a translator for teachers not fluent in the local tribal dialect, and keeping the school premises clean. This brought him into daily contact with the students, and it is possible that he might have similarly exploited other students in the past, officers investigating the case said.