50-year-old allegedly assaults girl at COVID-19 quarantine centre in Odisha's Balasore

BALASORE: The State Government’s claims of ensuring security of women in quarantine centres have fallen flat with rising incidents of crime against them in the places.

A 50-year-old man allegedly sexually assaulted a girl at a quarantine centre at Telipal Government school in Nilagiri block of Balasore district on Tuesday morning.

The girl was allegedly followed by the accused Ratnakar Jena, an inmate of the same quarantine centre, into the washroom where he molested her.

Hearing the victim scream, the other women inmates rushed to the washroom and caught hold of Ratnakar. They tied him up to a tree on the school’s premises and thrashed him. They also put up a video of the accused on social media and informed the local sarpanch and police about the incident.

As many as 77 inmates including four girls, who had returned from Kolkata, have been lodged at the quarantine centre for the last nine days. The men and the women were kept in two separate blocks of the schools. Even as Ratnakar was arrested, police said, he entered the women’s block by impersonating as a local political leader and family member of an inmate. 

In another incident in Kandhamal district, a youth allegedly attempted rape on a woman in a quarantine centre at BR Ambedkar College. The incident had taken place on Sunday night. The woman was in the washroom when a youth barged in and tried to rape her. She, however, managed to escape and informed the local sarpanch. The youth had fled the centre by the time but has been detained by police.