Dance teacher held for raping 16-year-old

GHAZIABAD: A 24-year-old dance teacher was arrested on Tuesday allegedly on charges of raping a minor girl and extorting money from her. The 16-year-old girl, a student of Class 12 in a Ghaziabad-based private school, had been attending classes at the dance academy for the past one year.

The accused dance teacher, Sumit Ghosh alias Rudra, was arrested along with his parents late on Tuesday night. Police said Ghosh had allegedly been blackmailing the girl with a mobile phone video clip that he had purportedly shot inside the dance academy.

The girl’s father, who owns a playschool in Sahibabad, told TOI that the girl had stolen more than Rs 1 lakh from her home in the past one year to pay the accused who was extorting her.

“Three to four months after my daughter got enrolled in the dance academy, I noticed that small sums of money were getting stolen from my wallet almost daily. I began locking up my wallet inside an almirah thereafter,” said the girl’s father.

The girl’s parents questioned her if she used to take money from her father’s wallet but she initially denied it. “When I began keeping my wallet securely inside a locker, my daughter began borrowing money from local shopkeepers and neighbours. We reprimanded her and asked her sternly as to why she needed all the money. She said that two boys studying in her own class had been blackmailing her.

“The boys flatly denied about anything to do with my daughter. Further enquiries revealed the involvement of the dance teacher. We found out that the accused teacher’s parents were also involved with him in the extortion,” he added.

On the basis of a complaint by the girl’s father, the police registered an FIR at Sahibabad police station under Section 376 (rape) and 386 (extortion) of IPC apart from relevant sections of the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act, 2012. Apart from Ghosh, his parents Ashish and Renu were also named as accused in the FIR.

Police investigations have revealed that the dance teacher had tutored the minor girl to mislead her parents about the two boys in her school if she ever got caught.

“Investigations have further revealed that the dance teacher had indeed been paid extortion money. The accused teacher had been threatening the girl of circulating the video clip widely on social media if she did not pay him money. The exact role of the accused’s parents in the matter is also being probed,” said SHO, Sahibabad, Rajesh Chaturvedi.