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AHMEDABAD: Amraiwadi police on Thursday arrested a 38-year-old man for repeatedly raping his 11-year-old stepdaughter over a period of two years. In-charge inspector of Amraiwadi police station, M S Kotwal, said a case for rape and under the POCSO act has been registered.

“The accused was sent to judicial custody by the court on Friday evening and the victim was sent for medical examination,” Kotwal said. The girl’s mother filed the FIR.

According to the FIR, this was the girl’s mother’s second marriage. Her first had taken place in 2001. “She has two daughters from that marriage.

The victim, is 11 years and nine months old, and the child is 13 years old. The girls’ mother separated from their father in 2008,” a police official said.

Police sources said the girl’s mother went to live with her sister along with her children. She then got a job in a catering company. “There, she met Devendrasinh Rajput, now 38, who drove an autorickshaw and lived alone in the city. Rajput and the girl’s mother married in 2009. The woman, her new husband, and her two children went to Jaipur and then Haryana and lived there four years before returning to Gujarat,” said a police official. “She took a job at a factory while Rajput resumed driving an autorickshaw,” he added.

Stomach ache complaint alerted mother: According to the FIR, on March 11, the family went to bed at around 11pm. “The mother was worried as the girl complained of stomach ache. She got up at around 3.30am to check on the girl and found her husband not beside her. She then saw her husband lying over her daughter.

She asked him what he was doing, and he said he was looking at the girl’s face,” said a police official. “It was late in the night and she could not do anything alone. She called her mother, but the call went unanswered.

In the morning, she told her mother about what had happened. Her mother came to her house and questioned the girl in detail.

“The girl told them that her stepfather had been raping her for the past two years and had threatened her, saying he would kill her and her mother if she opened her mouth,” an investigator said.

The girl’s mother and maternal grandmother then approached police. “We wasted no time and registered a case of rape and POCSO and arrested the accused,” said Kotwal.

(The victim's identity has not been revealed to protect her privacy as per Supreme Court directives on cases related to sexual assault)

