Mumbai: A special court, designated to hear cases of sexual crimes against children, on Monday sentenced a man to seven years in jail for repeatedly raping a nine-year-old child in 2015.
Special Judge under the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act Sanjashree J. Gharat found Ashraf Shaikh guilty of the offences of kidnapping and some sections of the POCSO Act.
Special Public Prosecutor Vinod More said that the man was acquainted with the child and her family as he had carried out some household work in their house a year prior to the incident. The child told the court last year, while she was playing in the compound of a nearby building, the man took her to another under-construction building nearby and sexually assaulted her. She could not raise an alarm, as the man had gagged her, she said. After assaulting her, he dropped her back to where she had been playing, gave her Rs. 20 and told her not to reveal the incident to anyone. But the child told her elder sister upon meeting her. Her sister called their mother and a police complaint was lodged.
The child also told court that the man had sexually assaulted her many times at her home at other times before. She had confided in her mother about it after neighbours had told her about the man entering their house in the mother’s absence. Her mother, she said further, had warned the man not to come to their home, but he would not stop doing so.
