The Terrible Ordeal of a 12 Year Old Sold by Her Uncle

NEW DELHI: Raped, escaped, and raped again by different men. This ordeal can be too much to bear for any ordinary woman, let alone a 12 year old girl. Palwal police station in Haryana has come across this case where a girl, barely in her teens, was forced into slavery by her own uncle to a group of men who violated her for days, before she made a bid for escape, only to be ravaged again.

The girl, who is from Odisha, was found unconscious in a field in Palwal by a passerby who brought her to the police station where she narrated how she ended up there. She was brought to Mathura in UP by her own uncle on the pretext of a job and who later proposed her for marriage. After she refused his proposal, he “sold” her to people he knew for Rs 50,000.

She escaped from them after days of ordeal and somehow reached Palwal bus stand only to be kidnapped again by two men who took her in an auto rickshaw and raped her in a nearby field, from where she was found.

Police, with help from Shakti Vahini, an NGO for women, have arrested the two men who had met the girl in auto rickshaw. They have been identified as Govardhan and Jitendra and have been booked under the charged of kidnapping and section 6 of Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act (POCSO).

They have also sent a circular to the states of UP and Odisha since the crime has been committed in all three states and their co-operation is sought. The uncle, the one who sold the girl, and her “buyers”, are still to be apprehended by the police.

“We have informed the Uttar Pradesh home department secretary about this and requested him to direct officers to conduct an extensive inter-state investigation — as the crime occurred in Odisha, Uttar Pradesh and Haryana — so that the well-organised trafficking syndicate may be busted,” Rishikant of Shakti Vahini told the media.

The girl is now in a child protection home and will be rehabilitated back once her family’s location is known.