BELAGAVI: Close on the heels of the brutal gang rape cases in Hyderabad and Unnao, a six-year-old girl was allegedly raped by a 26-year-old man near Belagavi on Wednesday evening. Shocked by the incident, residents of Kadoli village held a meeting at the Gram Panchayat premises on Thursday evening and decided to take out protest rally from the village to Deputy Commissioner’s office on Friday demanding stringent punishment for the accused. The village will also observe a bandh.
The accused is Sunil Balu Baynaik (26), a private passenger tempo driver and resident of Kadoli village. According to the Kakati police, the incident occurred around 5.30 pm on Wednesday and the accused was arrested from his house on Thursday morning. When he was produced before the court, angry locals broke the security cordon and thrashed him.
The police said the accused is a neighbour of the victim and was known to the family. He would often play with her and get chocolates for her. On Wednesday evening, he took the girl and her five-year-old brother in his tempo on the pretext of taking them to the playground. But instead, he took the children to his farmhouse.
When the children did not return home for long, the father went to the playground looking for them.
To his shock, he found his son locked inside the tempo. The boy told him that the ‘uncle’ had taken his
sister to the farmhouse. The father then broke the door of the farmhouse and immediately took his daughter to the district hospital where she is being treated.
Attempt to hush up case?
According to sources, the father of the accused tried to shift the victim to a private hospital before the medical tests could be conducted at the district hospital, in an attempt to shield his son. It is also said that family of the accused offered huge cash to the victim’s family not to lodge a complaint. The girl’s family, however, went ahead and lodged an FIR.
After the medical tests, police brought the accused to be produced before a court on Thursday afternoon where hundreds of youths had gathered. When the police were bringing him out of the court, the angry crowd broke the police security cover and thrashed him. The police immediately whisked him away to the police station.
Four of the protesters were taken into custody for the attack. Locals and activists of Sri Ram Sena staged a protest by blocking the court road demanding their release, but the police managed to convince them to withdraw the protest.