A village in Begusarai, Uttar Pradesh is on tenterhooks as the news of a Dalit girl being allegedly sexually assaulted by a young man from Muslim community has come to the fore, raising communal tempers in the region, says a report published on Swarajya by journalist Swati Goel Sharma.

The concerned man in question is a private tutor who lived two houses away from the victim’s house in Begasarai’s Khodabandpur block. The mother of the victim had no inkling of the excesses meted out on her daughter until the girl showed great reluctance in visiting the tutor’s house for her tuitions. It was then that the child described in excruciating detail about her tutor’s misdeeds.

The minor child who is yet to turn seven lives in Begusarai’s Khodabandpur block with her mother and 3 other siblings. Her father is living in Varanasi alone, where he runs a food cart for a living while his family continues to stay in Begusarai.

Around two weeks back, the minor girl refused to go to her tutor’s house for her tuitions. The tutor, alleged culprit, Mohammad Murtaza alias Dilkhush, lives just a couple of hundred metres away from the victim’s house. The family states that Murtaza is 22 years old but some reports suggest he is just 19.

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The girl had been evading her tuition classes for some time now. She was also down with fever. After avoiding tuitions for many days giving vague reasons for not going to the tuitions, the child’s mother asked her if she was hiding something from the family. The girl said as quoted by her uncle, “Wo Ganda kaam karta hai.” The child’s mother found bite marks in her private parts.

According to the child’s uncle, Murtaza would take the girl behind the curtains, remove her clothes and sexually assault her. The livid mother gathered women from the colony and approached one Akhtar who is an IAS officer and had links with accused Murtaza’s uncle.

According to the reports, this is not the first time that Murtaza has molested girls. He has been a repeat offender and has sexually molested at least 3 girls before- One Paswan and 2 Thakurs. The child’s uncle asserted that the previous cases of molestation, which happened with older girls were hushed up by the families of the victims, fearing social stigma. He claimed that they never thought Murtaza would indulge in molesting a minor girl.

Murtaza, on the other hand, continued to deny the charges levelled against him. In a local panchayat where Murtaza admitted to his crime, he later claimed that he was pressurised by Akthar to testify for a crime which he had not committed. Murtaza further claimed that he was being framed in the case by the Dalit family for extortion. The victim’s uncle stated that the Muslims in the village weren’t keen on punishing the accused and the situation had devolved close to a Hindu-Muslim riot.

The family finally approached the police and filed a complaint mentioning molestation of their girl child at the hands of accused Murtaza. However, they are yet to receive an FIR in the case till now. According to some reports, the culprit has already fled the village with his relatives even as the police were trying to arrest him.