A complaint of rape was lodged on March 30, by a 15- year-old girl against four persons in Ahmedabad. She alleged she was blackmailed and threatened with dire consequences on the basis of a video clip if she did not sleep with the four youngsters. They raped her whenever they wished over a period of two years. Later, the four were arrested on Sunday.
Suresh Soni (name changed), barely 17 years old, enticed a five-year- old girl with chocolates from his neighbourhood. He took her inside a bus, worked as a bus cleaner and raped her before cruelly killing her.
The police found the minor’s body on June 12. She was strangled and there were several knife marks on her neck and chest. Soon after, the boy was arrested.
Although these incidents might be perceived as isolated cases but they are not. They epitomized a trend of the last two years when Gujarat registered a mammoth 70 per cent increase in kidnapping and rape of minor children.
The number of rape cases in 2012 against minor girls was 150 but it shot up to 263 by the end of 2013.
According to Police officials, they were largely two reasons for the spurt in such cases. The first is ‘Elopement of minor girls’ and secondly, more families turning up to report rape cases.
“Earlier, people used to hide such incidents lest their daughters get a bad name and that hampers their marriage prospects,” another official pointed out.
As per the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB)’s latest report, there has been a 40 per cent rise in cases of parents who leave their new- born children in the lurch, the majority of who invariably turn out to be girls. There were as many as 113 such cases reported in 2013, up from 79 in 2012.
Why Gujarat’s sex ratio has remained either stagnant or even worsened is because of this reason.
The state’s sex ratio stood at 921 females counter to 1,000 men although it dropped to 919 during the 2011 Census.
The state placed at fourth countrywide in abandonment of children either in garbage dumps or near hospitals subsequent to Maharashtra that reported 259 such cases in 2013, followed by Rajasthan with 226 and Madhya Pradesh with 124 cases.
And the Gujarat state also registered a spike of 59 per cent cases against children in comparison with 2012.