“The accused got a prompt bail. The FIR itself had weak charges. The police should have invoked POCSO and added section 370 at the time of filing it,” Priyank Kanoongo, chairman of the child commission said, facebook page Documenting Crimes against Hindus.

In a joint operation by the national child commission, Delhi police and a Delhi-based NGO Mission Mukti Foundation a girl was rescued in the month of April. The girl is currently staying at a women’s shelter and would be taken to her parents after the lockdown ends. The accused, Mohammad Salauddin, was arrested but granted bail.

The girl’s father Kamal Mondal (name changed, surname retained) lives in a village in South 24 Parganas district of West Bengal. He told this correspondent over phone that on the early morning of 29 February, the family found the girl was not in her bed. They looked around, but did not find her. Later in the day, they reached out to her friends and classmates. A name, Mohammad Salauddin, emerged in the conversations. Kamal, who belongs to the Poundra community, which is a scheduled caste, said that the village has Muslims in majority and Hindu families usually accompany their girls outside homes. On his complaint, a first information report (number 592/2020) was registered at Barauipur police station on 2 March. While Kamal says he mentioned Salauddin’s name to the police, the statement in the FIR makes no mention of his name. The police only invoked IPC 363 (kidnapping).

In the first week of April, Mondal received a call from his daughter in one afternoon.“All she said was that she was trapped and wanted to come back home. She said she was in Delhi, but did not know her location,” Mondal said. He gave the phone number to the local police.Delhi police, NCPCR nabs the culprit in a joint operation. As police began to trace the victim, the nationwide lockdown had come into effect, and inter-state travel was prohibited.The West Bengal police soon passed the information to an NGO in Delhi, Mission Mukti Foundation. The NGO took the case to the National Commission for Protection of Child Rights. Soon, the commission directed the Delhi police to begin the investigation.The Delhi police traced the number to Khajuri Khas area in the North-East part of the national capital. Incidentally, Khajuri Khas is one of the areas in northeast Delhi hit by communal violence that broke out between 23 and 25 February. It was the same locality where murdered Intelligence Bureau employee Ankit Sharma also resided.

Virendra Kumar Singh, director of the NGO, speaking to Swarajya, said that the police gave him two phone numbers belonging to families living in the colony where the girl had been kept. The police said to him that she was brought to Delhi on 21 March, a day before ‘Janta curfew’. On 21 April, a team comprising NCPCR officials, cops from Khajuri Khas police station and a few volunteers of the NGO reached the spot.When the two families reached the spot, the team questioned them about the girl being kidnapped in their colony.“For a long time, they kept denying any knowledge of it. Eventually, they agreed to speak on the condition that their name would feature nowhere in the police case,” an NCPCR official said. A woman took the team inside the lane and pointed at the house. The joint team raided the house and detained both the girl and Salauddin.

Virendra Singh revealed that the girl in the presence of cops and NCPCR officials said that Salauddin was planning to sell her to someone in Rajasthan.“She said it in front of all officials. If it weren’t for lockdown, she would have been trafficked to Rajasthan by March end,” Singh said. Despite the seriousness of the crime, the accused of the crime was successful in getting bail after Delhi police failed to present the FIR copy, which was registered in West Bengal, before the court.

“The accused got a prompt bail. The FIR itself had weak charges. The police should have invoked POCSO and added section 370 at the time of filing it,” Priyank Kanoongo, chairman of the child commission said.

Image source: Documenting Crimes Against Hindus