dehradun

Updated: Jul 17, 2018 10:15 IST

Five boys, aged between 9 and 14, have been arrested for allegedly gang-raping an eight-year-old girl at Sahaspur, around 25 km from Dehradun. An initial probe has found the boys allegedly raped the girl on July 12, two days after watching pornography on the mobile phone of the elder brother of one of the accused. The case came to light on Sunday when the girl’s family lodged a complaint and the boys were arrested.

The police said the girl was lured with a chocolate to the house of one of the accused as the boys planned the rape.

Sahaspur station house officer Narendra Rathore said the accused belong to families of labourers and are students of Classes 6 and 9. “The girl is a student of Class V and lives with her family of four siblings and parents.” He said the girl was playing outside her house while her parents had gone out for some work when the five lured her.

Rathore said the five, according to their plan, took her to the house of the 10-year-old accused when his family members were out for work.

He said one of them stood guard at the house’s main door while the others raped her. “While they were committing the crime, one of them saw the elder brother of the 10-year-old accused coming towards the house,” said Rathore. He said they then asked the girl to go home.

The traumatised girl stopped speaking after returning home. “The girl refused to have her dinner. Later in the night when her mother insisted that she say what the matter was, she broke down and narrated her ordeal. Next day, her parents informed some of their neighbours and finally decided to lodge a complaint on Sunday evening,’’ said Rathore.

“A case has been registered against the five accused and all of them will be produced before a juvenile court on Monday,” said Rathore. He said they have seized the mobile phone on which the boys watched porn.

A similar case was reported from Kanpur, where four boys, aged between 6 and 10, allegedly gang-raped a four-year-old girl after watching porn on a mobile phone earlier this month.

Smitha Deshpande, the psychiatry department head at New Delhi’s Dr Ram Manohar Lohia hospital, said if there is planning involved in any action and then a person decides to follow-through with it, it means it has been done consciously. “And knowing that it is not socially acceptable. But what we have to look into is whether they were aware of the consequences. Even if we keep the moral obligations aside, did the boys know that their action will have legal repercussions and whether they were even scared of those repercussions,” she said.

She said banning pornography is not feasible, but there has to be a practical mechanism for restricting access to children as they are impressionable. “Also, talking about respecting each other’s body space, maybe as part of education, can help in making children aware of how their action can hurt others. But there is no quick fix.”