In Falak case, 3 held for abusing teenager

Three persons, including a woman, were arrested here Wednesday for torturing and sexually abusing a 14-year-old teenager, who abandoned two-year-old baby girl Falak at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences on January 18 with serious injuries, including human bite marks.

The police have arrested Jitender Gupta, father of the teenage girl, for abusing and torturing her at home. Falak continues to be in serious condition, including brain infection, an AIIMS doctor said. “Her condition is very critical as she has developed infection in the brain. This has brought down her chances of survival to less than 50 per cent,” Neurosurgeon with Jai Prakash Narayan Apex Trauma Centre of AIIMS, Dr Deeepak Agarwal, said.

“Today in the wee hours, doctors drained out the rest of the water that had accumulated in her brain through the spine. The fluid sample was sent to the laboratory for culture and after the reports came in, we started administering appropriate antibiotics for fighting the infection,” he said.

“The next 24 to 48 hours are crucial. All will depend on how she is responding to the treatment,” Dr Agarwal said. Doctors said, “Though she is deeply unconscious and on the ventilator, she opens her eyes and makes limb movements only when given painful stimulus. “This is part of the treatment module to check her brain functioning time-to-time,” they said.

Additional Commissioner of Police (south east) Ajay Chaudhary said, “Jitender Gupta sells vegetables. He had married Pushpa in 1993, who died six years ago. He has only one daughter. He is an accused in a murder case of Police Station Kalkaji and is currently out on bail. He used to beat and abuse his daughter repeatedly due to which she had to leave home.”

The police said the teenager, who has now been shifted to Prayas Juvenile Aid Centre, was living with her father Jitendra Gupta at F3/453, Lane number 4, Sangam Vihar in south-east Delhi till May 25 last year. Gupta was arrested on the statement of the girl. The police have also arrested a couple — Sandeep Pandey and Pooja — who forced the girl into flesh trade.

She was produced before the Child Welfare Committee and next day her statement was recorded. The girl, who was earlier was in trauma, did not initially reveal being sexually abused and forced into flesh trade.

She later disclosed this before the committee on Tuesday, Chaudhary said. The girl said that she ran away from her home as her father was abusive and would beat her often.
After running away from home in June 2011 she met a woman who would to visit her house with her father.

That woman took her to a another woman called Pooja who belongs to West Bengal and is involved in human trafficking. Pooja took the girl to Etah, in Uttar Pradesh, where she tried to marry her off to an old man. When the minor refused to this, she was raped by Sandeep, Pooja’s husband, at the latter’s behest.

Subsequently, the girl was brought to Delhi by Pooja, from Kolkata’s red light district Sonagachhi and was kept at Pooja’s house in Tughlakabad, where she was repeatedly sexually exploited by Sandeep.

Continued abuse

“Pooja then forced the girl into human trafficking and sent her to another place in Munirka here, where she was again sexually exploited. It was at Munirka that she met Rajkumar with whom she went away with and married him in Kalkaji and started living together in Mahipalpur,” Chaudhary said, adding that Sandeep is a resident of Govindpuri in Delhi.

A native of Barna in Etah, Sandeep is a labourer and paints on contract. Pooja came to Delhi 12 years ago.

The two ran a flesh trade racket in Delhi along with other associates. “We have identified a lot of people involved in the racket and will arrest them soon,” Chaudhary said.

The police is looking for Rajkumar alias Dilshad, who was also part of the sex racket. Two police teams have been despatched to Mumbai to nab the accused who has dodged the police twice earlier.

A married man, Dilshad is a driver by profession and has been living in Dwarka with his wife and a son. He had adopted a baby – Falak – and had left her with the girl and went to Mumbai, where his father-in-law lives.

When the teenager took Falak to AIIMS in a battered condition and claimed before doctors that the baby girl was her daughter.

The doctors found her story unconvincing and informed the police.