[nukkad] -Rape of 12-year-old homeless girl in local train outrages Mumbai

["kirankumar johare" <>]

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
 Good health is just the slowest, most lingering way of dying.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Rape of minor in local train outrages Mumbai 
(http://www.ndtv.com)
Sanjay Singh
Saturday, August 17, 2002 (Mumbai):

What would you do if you were travelling in a train compartment 
and you
saw a small 12-year-old mentally challenged girl being raped right 
next
to you?

Five commuters in Mumbai had their own answer. They did nothing.

It's a story that has angered and disgusted millions across the 
country
especially after one of the commuters described the entire 
experience in
a newspaper article.

Every day, 10 lakh women travel by Mumbai's local trains. On 
Tuesday
night, among the crowd was a 12-year-old homeless girl travelling 
alone.
Passengers say she was mentally imbalanced.

What followed has left the city outraged. A 22-year-old drunk 
labourer,
Salim, raped the little girl even as fellow commuters looked on 
and did
little or nothing to stop him.

"They could have shouted - at the most they would have got 
involved in a
fight. There were three of them, they could have averted this 
incident.
It is not possible to post a constable in every compartment," 
said
Suresh Bhalekar of the Borivali Divisional Railway Police.

None of those present in the compartment were available for 
comment, but
one of the eyewitnesses, Ambaresh Mishra, a journalist with the 
Times of
India, published a first person account on Independence Day.

"We were worse than the Mahatma's three monkeys. We, the five 
passengers
on the last Borivali-bound train on Tuesday night, witnessed a 
youth
sexually assaulting a minor, mentally-challenged girl in the
second-class compartment. What we saw left us numb. Salim had 
pulled the
girl to the floor and was raping her. Burdened with our 
middle-class
sensibilities, we remained silent," said Mishra.

The rapist got off at the next station where he was arrested by 
a
Railway Police constable.

The girl is now at a children's home and her rapist is in police 
custody
where he is said to have confessed to the crime - a crime where 
perhaps
the culpability extends to those could have protected the child. 
If only
they had tried.



KIKU


------------------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe, use the form at: http://www.mumbai-central.com/nukkad/#options
This list is archived at: http://www.mumbai-central.com/nukkad/archive.html