At Jantar Mantar rally, rape victims’ kin recall horror

She was playing near her house when her 50-year-old neighbour approached her. The girl, in all her innocence, smiled and waved at him. He took out a one-rupee coin and offered it to her. When she refused, he said he would give her something to eat. The child took his hand and the man wrapped her in a blanket and took her to his house.

Her mother had left to get tea when she heard the screams. "I dropped the tea and ran towards my house. But she was nowhere to be seen. And then, I saw her leaving my neighbour's house. She was crying and said she was hurt," the mother, a resident of Narela, told Newsline.

The girl had been raped and during the act, the man kept offering her chocolates to keep her quiet.

The incident was reported on November 25 and, according to the child's mother, numerous visits to the police station were a nightmare. "They told me my daughter wasn't bleeding and it wasn't as if she was dead. They drove me away," she said.

The mother was one among the kin of rape victims present at Jantar Mantar on Friday, during the Aam Aadmi Party's (AAP) protest against the gangrape of a 23-year-old paramedic student.

Another case was of a Class IX student who was gangraped by a cable operator and three others in Ghaziabad two years ago. "They filmed the act and began blackmailing her. Police took days to register a case. The police told us we should take the complaint back," the girl's mother said.

The case was eventually registered but only one of the accused was arrested. In another case, a 15-year-old was gangraped by four men on December 4 in Mangolpuri, Outer Delhi.

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