BENGALURU: Moved by the fervent pleas of her six-year-old daughter to cook some sweet dishes for Tuesday’s Sankranti festival, a 36-year-old woman on Monday evening decided to leave the girl and her two younger brothers in their ramshackle shed, in the basement of an under-construction building in northeast Bengaluru, and go to the upper floors to fetch some wooden logs to light a hearth.
The girl, though, latched on to her mother. While the child stayed back on the first floor, the mother went to the fourth floor to get the firewood. As she fetched some wooden logs and walked down the stairs 15 minutes later, she had her heart in her mouth at what she saw in a passage on the first floor. Her 24-year-old colleague — labourer Abhishek Kumar from Bihar — was sexually assaulting her daughter while gagging the child with his hands, a police officer said.
Screaming at the top of her voice, the woman pounced on Abhishek, hit him with a wooden log and dragged him away from her daughter. A few labourers, who also lived in the building, rushed to the floor, caught Abhishek and locked him up in a room, while others took the child to a nearby hospital, where she was declared brought dead.
The woman works as a labourer while her husband is a guard at the building. The couple from Nepal also has two sons — one aged three and the other only a month old.
The police officer said the deceased girl had come to know about Sankranti while playing with other children in the area. When her mother was on the way to the fourth floor around 5pm, the girl was delighted, assuming she was going to prepare some sweets after bringing down the wood.
The accused had joined work at the site only three days ago and lived on the first floor of the building. “The husband was away on some work. The mother is shocked at the turn of events. The accused visited the couple often. Half an hour before the incident, he had gone to the shed and given a biscuit to the girl,” the officer said, adding that the woman believes the child may have suffocated to death as the culprit gagged her.
Mob attack at spot
“The hospital alerted us about the incident. We rushed two teams to the spot and the hospital. An agitated crowd, including labourers from West Bengal and Uttar Pradesh working in the same building, had thrashed the accused before police reached the spot. The mob was assaulting other labourers from Bihar,” the officer explained. “Our team had a tough time rescuing Kumar and others. The situation worsened after the labourers learned that the girl was dead. The crowd assaulted Kumar with wooden logs and kicked him badly. We had to resort to mild lathicharge to clear the crowd.” DCP (east) D Devaraja camped at the spot, cleared the crowd, and brought the situation to normal by midnight.
According to another police officer, during interrogation, the accused showed no remorse for committing such a cruel act. “He explains each and every minute detail without any confusion. He says he didn’t assume the girl would die as he hadn’t assaulted her during the abuse. He just ensured she didn’t make noise by closing her mouth,” the officer added.
A case has been registered under the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (Pocso) Act and appropriate sections of Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita.
(The victim’s identity has not been revealed to protect her privacy as per Supreme court directives on cases related to sexual assault)
