New Delhi: A 15-year-old girl who had run away from her South Delhi home, returned to her aunt’s house on Saturday to recount the horrors of the five-year-long sexual abuse, she said, she faced from her stepfather.
Police registered a case after her medical examination confirmed rape. Her stepfather has been arrested.
The girl told police that her mother remarried after her father developed serious mental illness. She said her mother worked as a domestic help in the area near their house, and her stepfather raped her regularly when her mother was not at home.
“He had been raping her since she was 10. The family used to then stay in Tughlaqabad. He would show her sexually explicit films and lie naked with her. When she resisted, he would rape her and did it for over five years,” a senior police officer investigating the case told Newsline.
Police said when the girl told her mother about the sexual abuse, she did not believed her. Her mother asked her stepfather about the allegations, but he vehemently denied doing anything wrong to “their” daughter, police said.
“Three months ago, the girl met a neighbour who supported her emotionally. She fell in love with him and he encouraged her to approach police. The girl ran away from her house and stayed at his house for two months. However, she has said in her statement that the two never developed any physical relations,” police said.
A month later, she moved in with another woman in the locality and started working as a domestic help in Greater Kailash to sustain herself, police said.
“She is a young child and survival became difficult for her. Her employers made her work a lot. It was then she returned to meet her maternal aunt,” the officer said.
When the aunt saw that the girl had come back home, she was happy and informed her parents, but the girl refused to go home, police said.The girl told her ordeal to her aunt and then decided to inform police.
“My real father is mentally ill and lives in our village in Uttar Pradesh with my 17-year-old brother,” the victim had reportedly told police.
