Indian police officer arrested for allegedly raping teenage rape survivor

A 13-year-old girl, who went to a police station in northern India to accuse four men of kidnapping and gang-raping her, has alleged she was raped again by the police officer in charge.

All the men including the police officer have been arrested and charges filed against them, Nikhil Pathak, superintendent of police in the Lalitpur district in the state of Uttar Pradesh, said Thursday.

The girl’s mother filed a complaint on Tuesday saying her daughter had been kidnapped by the four men last month and taken to a distant city where she was gang-raped for three or four days before she was dropped back near her village, Pathak said.

When she went to the police station the next day to file a complaint accompanied by her aunt, the officer in charge of the station allegedly raped her.

The girl shared details of the ordeal with a children's rights organization, where she was sent for counselling. The non-profit group then approached senior district police officials.

"I made sure the complaint was registered," Pathak said.

Outrage

An investigation into the alleged crime is being carried out by a senior police officer from a different district.

The case has provoked outrage in India.

“If police stations are not safe for women, then where will they go with their complaints?” Priyanka Vadra from the opposition Indian National Congress asked in a Twitter post.

Despite tougher laws on sexual assault since the gang rape and murder of a young woman on a bus in New Delhi in December 2012, a high number of such crimes continue to be reported in India.

A total of 28,379 cases of rape of girls and women were reported in India in 2020, according to the latest government data available. Activists say many more rapes go unreported.