Rourkela: There seems to be no end in cases of crime against women, especially rape, in the Steel City. Another shocking incident surfaced Sunday when a POCSO case was registered at the Raghunathpalli police station here following a complaint by the family of a minor girl.
In the complaint, it has been alleged that victim had been repeatedly raped by her ‘paternal uncle’. The accused has been identified as Rajan Srivastav who works for a finance firm. He has fled from the locality and police have formed three teams to nab him.
Speaking about the case, SDPO Zone 3 Upasana Padhi said, “A case has been registered under the POCSO Act at the Raghunathpalli PS. Padhi also stated that the accused used to frequently visit the house of the victim as he was wellknown to entire family. The victim’s family is shocked at the turn of events. “He used to visit our house regularly and was more like a family member,” said a relative of the victim. Sources meanwhile stated that the accused had been sexually molesting and raping the girl for the past two years. However, recently she mustered the courage to inform her family about the ordeal which she had been going through following which the complaint was lodged. This is the fifth case of rape and sexual assault reported from this city in the last 15 days. Two girls were forcibly taken in an auto-rickshaw September 21 by three boys to a lonely place near the Birsa Munda Stadium. There the boys allegedly gangraped one of the girls and sexually assaulted the other.
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However, the very next day, the three accused were arrested by personnel from the Plant Site police station. Two days later a school teacher was arrested under the POCSO Act for allegedly misbehaving with a Class IX girl student. The teacher was sacked by the school authorities after parents of students demonstrated in front of the school. The shocking ordeal of a girl gangraped by five youths after being forcibly taken away from a popular restaurant surfaced September 25.
It later came to be known that among the five accused, four were known to the girl. The restaurant was later sealed by the police. A lecturer of the Government Autonomous College here was arrested Saturday following an order from Rourkela SP Nitesh Wadhawan. The teacher had allegedly sexually assaulted a girl student during a college trip to Puri.