22-05-2025
Review 5-year-old rape survivor's custody: HC
Kolkata: The Calcutta High Court directed authorities to produce a five-year-old girl—reportedly a victim of sexual assault allegedly committed by her father and currently living in a children's home—before a special court on Friday.
The special court will assess her mental state and decide whether she can be safely returned to her mother's custody.
"For an infinite period, you cannot keep her from the custody of her mother. She is a five-year-old child, not an accused. She is a victim of circumstances," Justice Tirthankar Ghosh told the state.
A CFSL report and a judicial statement of the child were submitted on Thursday. The state counsel objected to the immediate handing over of the child to the mother, as she is in a state of trauma.
The state informed the court that after the ossification test, the chargesheet against the father would be submitted before the trial court.
According to the mother's counsel, Sanjukta Samanta, the father is in police custody. The mother moved a petition before the court, stating that the child was sent to a child home on the pretext of mental health and no statement of the survivor and mother has been recorded to date.
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The petition states that the incident took place on April 8. Both parents work as daily labourers at Sankrail in Howrah. On the fateful day, the child was found crying and bleeding from her private part near the field where the parents worked. The mother's claim was that unknown miscreants raped her daughter. It was her claim that after treatment at the hospital, the daughter was taken to the local child home on April 9, and the father was kept with them for further investigation.
It was after days that she came to know her husband was arrested for allegedly sexually assaulting their child and remanded in police custody.
The mother claimed, "Cops has not at all been probing the case and has fabricated her husband as accused in the case and has put him behind the bar illegally without any information to her for an indefinite period."
