AHMEDABAD: A school principal and a 30-year-old man have been arrested for sexually assaulting two minor girls, including a 10-month-old, in separate incidents in Gujarat, police said.
The 55-year-old school principal suffocated a Class 1 girl to death in Dahod district after she resisted his rape attempt. In the second case, the 30-year-old man raped a 10-month-old baby girl in Bharuch’s Panoli village after abducting her from the courtyard of her home, police confirmed.
Senior police officer Rajdeep Singh Jhala said the six-year-old girl’s body was found on the premises of her school on Thursday evening. The post-mortem revealed that she suffocated to death. Police registered a case and formed 10 teams to probe the matter.
Jhala said, “The principal picked the girl from her house around 10 a.m. Her mother saw her off. But she never reached the school. On the way to school, the principal tried to sexually assault her. When she resisted, he covered her mouth and nose to stop her from screaming, thereby making her unconscious.”
On reaching the school, the principal left the girl’s body in his car and locked the vehicle. “In the evening after school hours, he dumped the body behind the school building and planted her school bag and shoes inside her classroom,” Jhala said.
When the police spoke to the principal, he said he had dropped off the girl at the school and left for some work. The police were not convinced. When the principal was quizzed, he confessed to the heinous crime. The cops presented the accused in additional district and sessions court in Limkheda on Monday, which remanded him to a 4-day custody for investigation. In Bharuch, the infant was taken away by the 30-year-old accused on Sunday while she was playing in her home’s courtyard in Panoli village and sexually assaulted.
Deputy superintendent of police Kushal Oza said, “The mother of the child works at a restaurant. The accused was acquainted with the child and her family, having frequently visited their home to play with her. The accused stole the baby away when she was playing and raped her not far from the house.” Police registered a case under sections of the POCSO Act and the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, and arrested the accused.
2 separate incidents
In one incident, a 55-year-old school principal suffocated a Class 1 girl to death in Dahod district after she resisted his rape attempt. In the second case, the 30-year-old man raped a 10-month-old baby girl in Bharuch’s Panoli village after abducting her from the courtyard of her home, police confirmed.