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Cops question 2 suspects, hold identification parade

BANGALORE: “Momma, Papa is not bad, na?” asked Rhea , 6, after she narrated to her mother what had happened to her in a dark room in her upmarket school in East Bangalore .Her innocent question reflects the brutal experience Rhea (name changed) went through, after which a few adults conspired to hush up the entire shameful episode of July 2. The child revealed nothing to her parents, but the trauma showed up in the form of stomach ache and intermittent fever in the following week.Her parents would have been in the dark if not for a call from a stranger on July 9, asking why the child was not attending school. Rhea’s mother got curious, and went to school to inform the authorities that her daughter was unwell, and to enquire about the stranger who had called.The teachers in school told her they hadn’t called. They also told her that Rhea was a badly behaved child, and that she had locked herself up in a room on July 2. The shocked mother checked with Rhea, and that was when the horror unspooled.Little Rhea told her mother everything — about how a teacher had locked her in a room to punish her, and when she left, two gym instructors had entered the room. Then Rhea convulsed in tears, and complained of pain. Her horrified mother understood — it explained why Rhea complained of pain while urinating.“She spoke about the harassment by two male staff in the school. Her mother was shocked. The sexual assault was confirmed after the parents took the kid to a private hospital on July 11, after fighting among themselves whether to believe what she had told them or not,” says Radha R of the special juvenile police unit, Association for Promoting Social Action (APSA), who took up the case on July 14 , soon after the father rang up the childline.It was a woman doctor at a private hospital in Marathahalli who educated the parents about the vaginal tear and the reasons for the child’s stomach ache. She told them Rhea had been sexually assaulted. Till then, the child was being treated for high fever, though she had been complaining to her mother about pain in her private parts.The child was not willing to talk to the APSA volunteers who went to counsel the family. “Momma, they are strangers. I won’t speak,” the girl kept telling her mother, but finally opened up only after she was convinced they wouldn’t harm her.“We asked her what happened in the dark room. She said Susan madam had locked her up in the room to punish her, and after she left the room, gymnastic teachers Punya and Ranbir entered the room. The girl didn’t say what happened, but would cry and complain of pain. She described Punya sir as a lean fellow and said Ranbir sir looked like actor Ranbir and was smart. On the morning of July 14, when we showed her the photographs of the two men, she repeated the same lines in the police station and identified them immediately,” Radha told TOI.The girl also said that another teacher, Pooja, had entered the room after the men had left and saw the child bleeding. She then brought a doctor with her, who administered an injection.“The innocent child hadn’t understood what was done to her and hadn’t spoken about the incident at home, till the mother questioned her after visiting the school on July 9,” pointed out Radha, who visited the family with her colleague Gunasheela. They suspect it was the culprits who might have called the mother to find out if Rhea had spoken up about what had happened.Rhea has also told her parents that she won’t ever go back to the school. Her distraught father, a techie who’s been shuttling between work, police station and doctors for the past 10 days, told TOI on Thursday: “My daughter doesn’t want to go to that school again.”A deep sense of despair and frustration was evident in his voice as he refused to speak of the family’s ordeal. “I don’t want to recount all that has happened. It is too traumatic. I don’t want to speak about the case either. I fear it will derail the investigation. The police are on it. Let them talk about the case,” he said helplessly.He was at Nimhans with his little one, seeking help from a counsellor for the trauma inflicted allegedly by male staffers at the school.The couple has been in Bangalore for 12 years, and the child is their only daughter. “My daughter is fine. She is on medication, and most of the physical injuries have healed. She is getting back to her playful self. We took her to a counsellor at Nimhans. The doctor says the counselling process will take some time.”“I had full trust in the school when I put my baby there. Not anymore. After this, who am I supposed to trust? My child doesn’t want to go to that school anymore. She told me she will never go there again. And I will not send her there,” he added resolutely.