A special court designated under the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act on Saturday sentenced a 25-year-old to ten-years of rigorous imprisonment for raping a 12-year-old, his neighbour, in 2016.
The child, a student of Class 6 at the time, had not revealed the incident to anyone out of fear as he had threatened her with dire consequences if she did so. The matter came to the attention of the child’s grandmother who used to live with her family.
The elderly woman could not find the child and had gone to look for her towards the common bathroom of the building. There, she had heard her granddaughter. When asked, she had said she was changing clothes inside. Suspicious, the grandmother had asked her to open the door and had found the then 20-year-old son of her neighbour inside with her.
Her granddaughter was in a half-naked condition. When she asked her granddaughter at home about it, the child had told her that the youth had taken her to the common bathroom during Diwali vacations too after showing her obscene videos. There, he had raped her and threatened not to tell anyone. This was the second time he had forcibly taken her to the bathroom and sexually assaulted her.
Prosecutor Veena Shelar said the grandmother appeared as an eye-witness in the case. Special Judge Seema Jadhav also recommended the case for compensation to the victim.
