PATNA: A week after a 14-year-old schoolgirl was murdered after being gang-raped in her hostel in Vaishali district, a 12-year-old mentally challenged girl was gang-raped at her school in Jehanabad district allegedly by the principal and three other teachers.
Police said the girl, a student of a government-run Urdu middle school at Kako, was raped one by one by the four men on the terrace of the school on Sunday afternoon, when the school was kept open on the order of the headmaster. The gan-grape came to light after the victim’s mother, also a teacher at the school, and some girl students found her lying in a pool of blood on the terrace.
“The victim’s mother lodged an FIR about the crime and named the headmaster and three male teachers. The victim was rushed to the hospital for treatment,” said Jehanabad DSP Prabhat Kumar Srivastava on Monday. The accused – headmaster Ajju Ahmed and assistant teachers Attaur Rahman, Abdul Bari and Mohammad Shakaut – have been absconding since the lodging of the FIR, he added.
Kusum Bharti, the station house officer of Kako police station who registered the FIR, said the victim is currently under treatment at the hospital and out of danger. “She is slightly mentally challenged and comes to school regularly with her mother. On Sunday, she did not return to her classroom after recess was over. Some girls then saw her lying in a pool of blood on the terrace and alerted her mother,” said Bharti.
It was allegedly on the order of the headmaster that the school was being kept open on Sundays and on leave on Fridays without the permission of the education officials for the past few weeks. “Raids are being conducted to arrest the four accused. An investigation is on into find out the veracity of several complaints received about their misconduct,” said Srivastava.
Following the January 8 gangrape and murder of a Dalit girl student at a government-run residential school for SC communities in Vaishali, several women’s organisations and the local people organised protest rallies in Hajipur on Monday. Autopsy report of the victim is yet to be made public while police claims she was not raped, despite telltale indications to the contrary.