sexual assault

landlord

boy

private parts

After being subjected to the most brutalby his 65-year-old, a seven-year-oldwas rendered comatose with hisbleeding and his skin having peeled off. After teetering precariously close to death for a few days, the boy began recovering with timely medical intervention.The victim is a second standard student of a reputed private school, and is the younger of two sons. Following the incident, the East Division police arrested the house-owner under various sections of the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act and section 377 (unnatural offences – anyone indulging in carnal intercourse against the law of nature) of the IPC. With the victim on the road to recovery, his parents have hastily packed up and vacated the house.Speaking to Bangalore Mirror, the boy’s anguished mother said, “I used to call our landlord ‘Appa’ (father), and cannot believe that he has sexually assaulted my little one. A few days ago, my son went to the toilet and called me inside to show me his private parts which were bleeding. The skin too had peeled off, and he began crying. Within seconds, he fainted on the toilet floor and his eyes began rolling upwards. I was devastated and rushed him to a hospital where he suffered a high fever for days,” she said. Doctors initially suspected the child would not make it, seeing him unresponsive to medication. However, patience and timely medical intervention worked wonders on the boy, who slowly came to and began convalescing.Perhaps the victim’s mother would never have known the truth, had it not been for an incident she happened to witness off-chance. A few weeks before the incident, the boy was sitting in the passageway of their first-floor house and playing with a toy car, when the landlord — who reportedly lives in the ground floor — suddenly came upstairs and began fondling himself in front of the child.He then allegedly called out to the child to accompany him to the second floor, which was when the boy’s mother stepped out and asked the landlord what he wanted. The pervert then quickly returned to his house, pretending it was nothing.“Soon after my baby began getting depressed, I suspected something terribly wrong. It took me almost two hours to fathom what had been happening, and another three hours to convince my son to tell us the truth. I did everything to coax him and make him comfortable; even promising not to tell his father so he had nothing to be afraid of. He finally told me he would tell me and asked for some time,” she added.To make him talk to her, the boy’s mother gave him the television remote and asked him to watch his favourite channels; she bought his favourite chocolates and even tried to convince him to talk by giving him his favourite toys. Just before bedtime, the boy went into the toilet and called his mother inside, showing her his bruised and bleeding privates. Unable to explain anything else, he then fainted.The agonised mother did not have the courage to barge inside her owner’s house knowing very well that at that time, the accused and his son would be under the influence of alcohol. Her husband - who works as a supervisor in a private firm – would only come home late, so without waiting, she rushed her son to a hospital as his condition was critical. She approached the East Division police the next day and filed a complaint, after which the accused was arrested immediately and subjected to medical examination.The family had moved into the house just two months ago, and said they would be done vacating by next week. The child’s parents are unsure of how many times the little one was sexually abused, and are taking care not to force him to reveal anything. Instead, they are working on making him forget the repulsive incident in the hopes that his anguish will not last.