After a three-year-old was raped and murdered in the morning hours of Tuesday, an angry mob lynched the culprit in Lucknow’s lower middle class Pandeypur locality.
When Riya Singh, a pre-schooler went missing on Monday evening, the family went to the local police station but was advised to search the locality.
“We left a picture with them but they paid no attention” sobs Riya’s father Ratnesh Singh showing a photo of a smiling girl in a red frock with a shock of brown hair.
On Tuesday morning the family got a phone call saying the girl was fine and would be home later. Singh rushed back to the police station where the call was traced to the home of Shiv Kumar, a 30-year-old carpenter who lived next door to him. Inspector Chiranjeev Sinha rushed to the spot with two of his men and nabbed Kumar who broke down and led them to a trunk containing Riya’s dead body, which had been stripped naked.
As Kumar was led out of the house, angry neighbours, almost 1,000 of them according to the police, stoned and thrashed him. The police stood by.
Additional forces arrived and freed Kumar, but despite being rushed to the Trauma Centre, he was declared brought dead.
‘Ire understandable’
Lucknow’s AK Jain says the anger was “understandable” but is cautious on the girl’s plight. “Her throat was slit, probably after she cried out of pain but only a post mortem can confirm rape”.
The Indian Penal Code does not recognise Child Sexual Abuse (CSA) as an offense.
It is only by application of certain other Indian Penal Code provisions that a child sexual offender can be punished.
Kumar’s 80-year-old, blind mother denies hearing anything and has nothing to say to defend a son who had served two and a half years in prison for raping a 12 year old, before being let off on bail.
According to a 2007 study by the Ministry of Women and Child Welfare on Child Abuse in India, every second child in the country is subjected to some kind of sexual abuse. Every fifth child faces severe sexual abuse.
According to the same study 41.20 per cent of the girls in Uttar Pradesh are subjected to sexual abuse and 50 percent of this happens at the hands of people known to them.
