14-yr-old Lankan girl lured to India for sex & money

A 14-year-old Sri Lankan girl, raped by a man who lured her  to India with the promise of  a career in films and modelling, has been rescued and sent back to her home country.  

The teen and her mother  flew to Sri Lanka from the  Kempegowda International Airport on Friday evening after completing the legal formalities. The teen's alleged tormentor,  34-year-old Sathish Patil, has been arrested.    

The girl's story is nothing short of a nightmare.

In 2015, she became friends with Patil who claimed to a "fixer" in Bollywood. He claimed  his relatives were into a  popular Hindi television serial. His Facebook profile showed him posing alongside film stars. This was enough for the teen to get convinced that she could also pursue a career in films with his help. Patil  encouraged her. Looking  at her photographs  on Facebook, he  said  she could  easily get into films and asked her to come to Mumbai with some money.  

The girl and her mother arrived in Mumbai on November 28, 2017. Patil met  them on December 1  and took them to a hotel in Andheri. The same day,  he  called the girl  to his room but kept the mother  in a separate place, asking her not to disturb them as the "casting" was under way. In the room, he gave the girl  some juice laced with sedatives, and she  fell unconscious. When she woke up a few hours later, she had severe pain in the lower abdomen. But she didn't  talk to her mother about the incident.  

Patil later took  the mother and the daughter to Haveri to buy them clothes, saying  the money (Rs 2 lakh) they had brought was not enough to  purchase fashionable outfits in Mumbai. He then brought them to  Bengaluru. On  December 7, he put them on a Mumbai-bound bus at Majestic and deserted them. When he didn't turn up, the  teen opened up to her mother, and the two went to the jurisdictional  Upparpet police station and filed a complaint.

Police immediately  opened a case  under various sections of the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (Pocso) Act, IPC section 376 (2) (rape of a minor) and cheating.  They also managed to arrest the suspect. A court later  remanded him in judicial custody.