Patna: A seven-year-old Dalit girl was raped by an upper caste villager in Bihar after she had objected to stealing radishes from her field.
The victim with severe wounds in her private parts has been admitted to a government hospital.
The incident took place at Machiaon village in Kaimur district, a south-western Bihar district located 200km from Patna, on Sunday evening but was reported to the media on Wednesday.
According to reports, the victim, a Grade 2 student enrolled in a local government primary school, had gone along with her friend to inspect her radish field located on the outskirt of the village when she saw a man uprooting the vegetable. She objected.
“In a fit of rage, the man forcibly lifted me in his arms, took me towards the bushes along the river bank and sexually assaulted me,” the victim told the police.
The victim’s family members rushed to the spot and beat the accused before handing him to the police. The police have arrested the accused identified as Lalu Sharma.
“This is a heinous crime and the case will be recommended for speedy trial so that the accused is sentenced quickly,” the local district superintendent of police, Harpreet Kaur, told the media Wednesday. She also announced support to the victim who is undergoing treatment at the local hospital under police protection.
Reports said the victim was bleeding profusely and writhing in pain when her family members rushed to the spot. Doctors said they are trying to save the girl whose condition remains very critical.
Sexual attacks on Dalits remain a matter of serious concern in Bihar. In the Kaimur district alone, as many as five incidents of rape of Dalit girls have been reported in the past four months.
In August, two Dalit girls were kidnapped and gang-raped for four days by five people in the district. The victims were kidnapped while they went to the nearby forest to collect firewood.
Last month, a 15-year-old Dalit girl was allegedly gang-raped and strangulated to death in eastern Bihar’s Purnia district. Similarly, in October 2014, six teenaged Dalit girls were allegedly gang-raped at Kurmuri village in central Bihar’s Bhojpur district.
They had gone to sell collected scrap at a local shop when all were held at gun-point and gang-raped by the scarp dealer and his associates.