The Mumbai Police on Tuesday arrested 10 students from Andheri for repeatedly sexually assaulting a school junior. All of them, booked under relevant sections of the Indian Penal Code and the Prevention of Children from Sexual Offence Act, have been sent to the Juvenile Detention Centre in Dongri, according to The Hindu.
They had been assaulting the boy for about six months, according to the report. The complainant’s family had first approached an NGO that later took the 12-year-old boy to the police to lodge a formal complaint, reported The Times of India. “These classmates first recorded the sexual assault on me after taking me forcefully to an isolated spot in Andheri (East). They took turns to assault me and record the act,” read his complaint.
According to the complaint, the assaulters later started blackmailing him with video footage of the assault to demand money. The police have seized the mobile phone in which the crime has been recorded. They have sent the phone to the Forensic Science Laboratory to retrieve the video recording that will be used as evidence, according to The Times of India.
Apart from being schoolmates, the complainant and the accused are also from the same locality in Andheri. The accused are all 15-16 years of age.
The incident came to fore when the complainant’s mother found Rs 700 in the boy’s pocket. “When the boy was unable to answer, she checked the cupboard where she stores her savings and found money missing. She again confronted him and asked him what he needed such a large sum of money for,” a police officer told The Hindu. After much prodding, the boy revealed to his mother that he was being blackmailed by his schoolmates.
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