CHENNAI: A 17-year-old boy was on Thursday arrested for the rape of a 10-year-old girl found outside her house in Sholavaram on Sunday last. The accused juvenile was booked under the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act, 2012, police said adding that it was the first time the stringent act was invoked in the state.

Police claimed to have got the breakthrough when they picked up a boy on suspicion near Gandhi Nagar in Sholavaram on Thursday morning and questioned him. Investigators found that he and another youth had been caught in an intimate position with a woman of the village a few months ago. The other youth was brought in and subjected to interrogation before he admitted to the crime.

The boy told police that he had gone to the girl's house in search of food as he was hungry. He found the main door open and went in. The girl was asleep next to her parents. He woke her up, promising to buy her tea and took her to a secluded spot about 150 metres from the house. There he raped her repeatedly, police said.

When he found the girl bleeding, the boy said he would bring her parents and vanished. The girl collapsed in pain at the same spot. She was found there early in the morning by her parents who had launched a search on waking up and finding her missing.

The girl was then taken to the Institute of Child Health and Hospital in Egmore, Chennai where she remains in the special ward. Doctors said her condition was stable. "The child is still in a state of shock and she has not been able to accurately recall the sequence of events," Sholavaram police inspector S Balu said. The victim's father is a labourer and the family lived in a rented house at Gandhi Nagar in Sholavaram.

The arrested was produced before the juvenile justice board committee in Tiruvallur and later sent to the juvenile home in Kellys, Chennai. He was charged under Sections 376 (2) (F) of IPC (rape with a child below 12 years) and Sections 6 and 16 of the POCSO Act.