Neighbour rapes specially-abled child while her parents went to cast vote

A 29-year-old youth was arrested in connection with the rape of a mentally challenged minor girl at Habibpur in Malda on Monday.

It may be mentioned that the girl was raped when the victim’s parents went to cast their votes on Sunday evening.

Police said that the accused Nirmal Tudu is the neighbour of the victim and he had kept a watch on her parents. As soon as they went out of their house the accused brought the mentally challenged girl in his house and allegedly raped her.

The victim’s sister was also not present in the house as she went out to play in a nearby playground. After returning home, she did not find her sister in the house. By that time her parents had also come back and they initiated a search for the accused.

After an hour, the victim’s parents found her lying unconscious behind the house of the accused. They took the girl to hospital in a traumatised condition. Later, the parents came to know that she was raped. They lodged a complaint with the police.

Police came to know after preliminary investigation that Tudu had raped the girl and arrested him from his residence. A police officer said that the accused often used to visit the girl’s house and her parents had also not seen anything suspicious in his behaviour. But after interrogating the accused, police came to know that he had chalked out the plan a few days ago.

In another incident of rape in West Midnapore, a mentally challenged woman succumbed to her injuries in Jhargram Hospital on Monday morning. She was gang-raped near her maternal uncle’s house at Belpahari. She went missing on Thursday. The woman was later found on Saturday near Silda with injuries all over her body and admitted to the hospital.