In the Muslim-majority village of Kalpakancheri in the Malappuram district of Kerala, a minor girl was raped over and over for the past few months in exchange for drugs, reports Hindu Post.
This all started when the girl received a mobile phone as a gift to help her attend online classes during the lockdown and then her painful ordeal began.
After the girl reported the incident, police arrested Muhammed Aflah and Muhammed Rafeeque who are both in their early twenties but the main accused in the case, a 30-year-old male is on the run.
As per reports, the girl lives with her mother and brother and the father works abroad. The modus operandi used by the accused was to become friends with the girl by chatting her up online and he eventually started visiting her at her house, in the dead of the night.
He then introduced her to drugs and the craving left the victim with no other option but barter for sex. Once the minor girl became a full addict, the accused introduced her to his friends and acquaintances who then raped her. This incident is a grim reminder of Rotherham sex grooming gangs who would also get young girls, some of them as young as eleven hooked on drugs and then systematically rape the.
When the ordeal became unbearable, the girl gathered all her courage and informed her relatives who in turn informed the authorities at Childline. To ensure the girl did not report this, her tormentors also threatened to kill her.
As information released, the girl was first introduced to ganja, then hashish oil and cocaine with the promise of higher drugs of injection. But what is even more troubling is that the Childline authorities now suspect that there are possibly several such victims who have been enslaved by the drug mafia.
To further complicate the situation, serious accusations of complacency have been made against the police authorities in the district because they acted slowly on arresting the accused which allowed others to go into hiding.
The girl is now under the custody of the Child Welfare Committee (CWC) of the district and the CWC Chairman, Shajesh Bhaskar was critical in his comments and said, “This is not an ordinary POCSO case. This is a case of extreme seriousness demanding serious and immediate intervention. I was shocked to see such a crime. Never before could we detect such a thing in Malappuram. The racket traps girls through Instagram, makes them addicts to drugs, and abuses them sexually,”.
Bhaskar is so disgusted by the apathy of the police, he has decided to press the government and ask for the intervention of higher authorities in the probe. The accused have been charged under sections of POSCO, punishment for rape, and the penalty for providing narcotic drugs to a child.
As per information made available, the young minor is showing withdrawal symptoms which is normal when one goes through de-addiction treatment.
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