Minor girl gang-raped

A mentally challenged underage girl from a minority community is said to have been gang-raped by three men here on Monday morning, the police said.

The 13-year-old girl got a phone call around 6 am and left home located at Haveripeth near Murugha Mutt without informing her parents. When she didn’t return home after long, her parents got worried and went to the jurisdictional Suburban police station around 10 am to lodge a missing person complaint. While still in the police station, the parents learnt from other members of the family around 11.30 am that the girl had returned home.

When police talked to the girl, she revealed that a man named Kumar, who works as a private bus driver, had taken her to a field behind the new administrative building of the APMC on Saundatti Road, which is about two km from her home. There, Kumar was joined by two of his friends. The trio then took turns to rape her. The girl said she knew Kumar but didn’t recognise his two friends. Police admitted the girl to the civil hospital.

A police officer told Deccan Herald that a boy in the Haveripeth locality had seen the girl talking to a stranger in the morning and suspected that she had gone with him.

Sources in the family told the police that a similar incident had happened a month ago. The girl went missing and returned home late in the evening. When questioned by her parents, she told them she had gone with Kumar.

The family suspected she was sexually assaulted at that time, too, but hadn’t approached the police.