india

Updated: Nov 24, 2018 09:12 IST

The Kurla police arrested a 32-year-old man on Thursday for allegedly harassing his 19-year-old wife by forcing her to get Rs 9 lakh from her family. The man had raped the woman when she was a 13-year-old Class 6 student and later married her in 2017 when she turned 18. The girl had agreed to drop the case under the condition that he would marry her.

Within two months of their marriage, the husband and his mother started harassing the victim.

“The victim’s mother-in-law started demanding Rs 9 lakh from her family, claiming the money was spent to defend her son in the rape case. She even poured kerosene on the victim to torture here,” another police officer said.

Frustrated with this, the victim left her husband in January 2018 and started living with her parents. The accused, however, kept harassing her and stalked the woman for a few days at Govandi station in September. He even abused her several times over the phone and also threatened to throw acid on her. In September, when the woman had posted her photo on a social networking website, the accused posted vulgar and defamatory comments on her photo. Scared and disturbed, the woman then lodged a complaint against her husband with the Kurla police.

On Thursday, the woman learnt her husband was going to go to Kurla railway station. She alerted the police, after which the police arrested him. The accused has been charged with sections 509, 506 of the IPC and 67A (publishing or transmitting of material containing sexually explicit act, etc., in electronic form) of Information Technology Act. “We’re trying to collect more evidence in the case,” said M Patil, inspector at Kurla police station.