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TRICHY: A 65-year old correspondent of a primary school was booked for sexually harassing four minor girls staying in a hostel run by him inside the school premises at Siruganur on the outskirts of Trichy on Wednesday night. All the inmates of the hostel were handed over to their parents following the sexual allegation which was raised on Thursday.

A case was registered by Siruganur police against J Dharmaraj, 65, of Bharathi Nagar for committing sexual assault on the girls repeatedly. It was the complaint of the mother of a 14-year-old girl that brought the crime to light on Wednesday night. According to the complaint, her daughter and three other inmates of the hostel had been undergoing harassment at the hands of Dharmaraj.

She came to know about the harassment after her daughter called her up using the mobile phone of the mother of another affected girl on Wednesday. The threat of the girl to commit suicide prompted her to take the issue seriously and bring it up in the night itself. The police sources said that the correspondent who asked the girl to bring refreshments to his room touched her inappropriately when she came. The police said that it happened several times to all the four girls but they suffered in silence. The latest episode forced the girl to reveal it to her parents.

As soon as the police took up the investigation, Dharmaraj absconded and has been on the run. With the issue becoming serious, the district child protection unit (DCPU) and anti-human trafficking unit (AHTU) launched a probe on Thursday . They visited the home and inquired with all the 87 inmates of the hostel. All the inmates were students of the government school functioning near the hostel. Since the hostel was run free of cost, the parents enrolled their children there despite their houses being located in nearby villages.

The officials called up all the parents to the hostel on Thursday and handed over the children to them. An official source said that the hostel administration had recently applied for its registration under Tamil Nadu hostels and homes for women and children regulation Act, 2014.

