Bihar panchayat member among two held for raping 9-year-old

BHABUA: A nine-year old Mahadalit girl was allegedly gang raped by a panchayat member and three other persons in southwest Bihar’s Kaimur district.

Accused panchayat member Ekbal Khan and another suspect Sonu Khan were arrested on Sunday and identified by the victim, police said and added that they had been sent to the jail at Bhabua, headquarters of Kaimur district, 196 km southwest of Patna.

The police said a team of doctors had conducted medical examination of the victim and she would be produced in a Bhabua court later on Monday for recording her statement under Section 164 of the Criminal Procedure Code.

Earlier, Ekbal Khan, Sonu Khan and two other persons were made accused by the victim’s father in an FIR registered at women’s police station at Bhabua.

In the FIR, the complainant said his daughter was grazing pigs outside Nandana village in Chainpur police station area, about 10 km from Bhabua, on Saturday when the panchayat member and three other persons forcibly took her to a nearby field and raped her.

This is the fourth incident of rape with minors in Kaimur and adjoining Rohtas district in the last two months. On August 13, a 13-year-old girl was kidnapped by two youths from a village in Chand police station area and raped for three days. She was dumped outside the village on August 15 when her condition deteriorated.

Two minor Dalit girls, aged 15 and 17, of a family were kidnapped from Bhagwanpur village in Kaimur district on September 24 and gangraped for four days at a computer centre at Sasaram in Rohtas by five men.

On September 29, a middle aged man allegedly raped a 15-year-old girl at Patloiya village in Bhagwanpur police station area of Kaimur district. The parents of the victim had gone to Varanasi for treatment of her critically ill brother and she was in the house with her visually challenged septuagenarian grandmother.