Minor rape victim gives birth to baby boy at PGI

17-yr-old was allegedly raped at a UP village; child handed over to Missionaries of Charity.

A 17-year-old girl, allegedly raped a few months back at a village in Uttar Pradesh, on Thursday gave birth to a baby boy at the Post-Graduate Institute of Medical Education and Research (PGIMER).

Her child was handed over to the Missionaries of Charity, Sector 23.

Police said they had registered a case.

The girl was brought to the city by her parents for abortion during her fifth month of pregnancy but was rescued by the members of Childline, an NGO, who put her in the Missionaries of Charity Home, Sector 23.

According to sources, the victim, who is from a village in Uttar Pradesh, was brought here by her parents about four and a half months ago for termination of her pregnancy. However, the doctors here refused to terminate the pregnancy, saying it would pose a threat to her life. The parents then left the girl with her sister who is married here and lives at a peripheral village of the city.

As per the officials of the Childline, who got to know about the girl through one of their outreach programmes in the villages surrounding Chandigarh, the victim (whose identity is withheld) during one of her counselling sessions revealed that she was raped by a shopkeeper at her native village one afternoon when she had gone there to buy groceries.

Fearing embarrassment and a social stigma, the girl's family brought her to Chandigarh for the termination of her pregnancy. When the NGO members met the parents to counsel them against abortion, the parents refused to take the girl back with them.

Said Dr Sangeeta, project director, Childline, "We counselled the parents but they refused to take her and insisted on abortion. Fearing that they might still want to go ahead with termination of the pregnancy through some quack, we decided to keep her at the Mother Teresa Home in Sector 23 where she had been staying for the past month and a half. In fact, even the girl was very violent and would even hurl abuses at nurses and doctors. She was not able to handle what had happened to her. So we held many counselling sessions with her during which she admitted that the she was raped by a boy in the shop near her house."

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