Acting on the complaint of an alert resident of Sector 19 in Koparkhairane, the police have arrested the father, stepmother, uncle and grandmother of a 15-year-old girl for allegedly assaulting her for not doing domestic chores.
On November 30, Salma Saleem Shaikh (37), a resident of Sector 19, found the girl crying outside the gate of her housing society, Anand Bhavan. When she enquired, the girl told her she lived in the same sector and was fed up of her family’s assaults on her. She told Ms. Shaikh her father and stepmother had chopped her hair short, hit her on head with the lid of a pressure cooker and cut her hand with a knife after she refused to wash utensils and sweep the floor.
Ms. Shaikh took her to NMMC Hospital, Vashi, for treatment and then to her own house. On December 3, she took the girl to the Koparkhairane police station and filed a case against the family. The girl said her uncle and grandmother too assaulted her over minor issues, and she had dropped out of school. Her father is a vada pav seller.
The family members were arrested the same day under Sections 323 (voluntarily causing hurt) and 324 (voluntarily causing hurt by dangerous weapons or means) of the Indian Penal Code. “The girl has been sent to a child reform centre, and her family members to judicial custody,” senior police inspector Suryakant Jagdale said.
