Sexual assault remains a stigma in our society and the victims seldom speak out fearing shame and threats. In a reflection of the same, a seven-year-old girl had kept mum despite being allegedly sexually assaulted a month ago by her neighbour in Tughlaqabad.
But on Saturday evening, the incident finally came to light when her younger brother spilled the beans after he had a fight with his sister.
He told their mother about how he witnessed the incident and his mother approached the police and registered a complaint.
The girl told her mother that she had kept quiet as she was threatened by the accused. The accused Rana, who works as an e-rickshaw driver and lives with his family in Tughlaqabad area, was later booked.
Narrating the incident, the girl told her mother that she and her younger brother were going to buy sweets from a nearby shop when the accused, Romi Rana, stopped them.
When the boy told Rana that they were going to buy sweets, he pulled out a Rs 10 note from his pocket and asked the boy to go and get some more sweets with the money.
The girl was then lured by Rana to an abandoned plot where he sexually assaulted her while her brother was getting sweets from the shop.
"When the boy returned, he found his sister was missing. He tried to look for her and later found her crying in the abandoned plot. He claimed that he saw the accused with his sister and kept mum when the accused threatened them," said a senior police official.
After the girl narrated the entire incident to her mother, she informed her husband, and they lodged a complaint at the Govindpuri police station on Saturday evening.
"A case under Sections 376, 506 and POCSO act was registered immediately and the man was arrested within half an hour from his house," said Romil Baniya, Deputy Commissioner of Police (South-East).