A 17-year-old girl, allegedly raped several times by her in-laws and fleeing a forced marriage, was rescued from a passenger train that arrived in Kota from UP, officials said as per PTI. The Railway Protection Force rescued the native of Gorakhpur who was allegedly ¡°sold off¡± in marriage in November 2020 year and repeatedly raped by her in-laws.?
After counselling the fear-stricken girl, the Child Welfare Committee took cognisance to initiate prosecution against those involved in ¡°selling¡± the minor into marriage and against her in-laws for physical exploitation. She was sent to a shelter home. She was found on the Gorakhpur Avadh Express train on April 10, according to Kota CWC chairman Kaniz Fatima.
The minor girl was in a state of shock but later told the CWC about her ordeal. The teenager claimed that she was a second-year BA student in her hometown of Deoria in UP. Her parents and maternal uncle got her married against her wishes on November 30, 2020, to a person from a nearby village, the girl said.?
After the marriage, the minor alleged that her husband's brother and sister-in-law's husband repeatedly raped her. When she narrated the problem she was facing to her husband and father-in-law, the men claimed that they had ¡°purchased¡± her from her maternal uncle and ordered her to do whatever was asked. When she resisted, her husband and father-in-law took her to an unknown place where her brother-in-law and husband of her sister-in-law would take turns to sexually exploit her for months, the UP native alleged.?
She claimed that they also filmed a video of her while she was naked and uploaded it on social media platforms. The girl stated that she somehow managed to escape from the captivity of her in-laws and reached her uncle's home in Deoria where she urged him to lodge a case against her husband and in-laws but was allegedly stopped from doing so.?
Sensing that her uncle was not going to help her out, she fled from there on April 7 and boarded the train the next day, Fatima said. The ticket examiner on the train informed the RPF suspecting that the girl had escaped from home, said Ashok Yadav, a sub-inspector at RPF, Kota, who along with the Childline team rescued the minor.?
The CWC has written to the authorities concerned in UP to lodge a case against the accused in the matter, chairman Fatima said.?