MP shelter home horror: Another victim surfaces

Bhopal: A preliminary investigation into the alleged rape of a speech and hearing impaired girl in a shelter home here by its director has led to disclosure that the “sexual predator” had outraged modesty of total four inmates of the women hostel.

“The fourth victim of shelter home’s director Ashwin Sharma has surfaced and she has been identified. We have talked to her parents. She is going to file a FIR in connection with the incident in a day or two,” counsellor of the deaf and mute help desk, the one of its kind opened by the Madhya Pradesh police at Tukoganj in district headquarters town of Indore said on Friday.

The 19-year-old speech and hearing impaired girl, who filed an FIR with the police in Dhar, Madhya Pradesh, on Thursday. The victim alleged that the director raped her during her stay at the Bhopal shelter home to complete her course in local industrial training institute (ITI). She also told the police that another inmate of the hostel had also fallen victim to the sexual predator.

Following her disclosure, the police located the fourth victim and contacted her parents. She was coming to Dhar to file a formal complaint, sources said.

Earlier, two sisters, both deaf and mute, fled the shelter home in the first week of this month following alleged sexual harassment by the accused.

They narrated their ordeal before the Indore-based sign language expert Gyanendra Purohit who took them to the Tukoganj police help desk for registration of their case.

The two sisters had then brought to light the heartrending case of the 19-year-old rape victim leading the latter’s brother to rescue her from the shelter home on August four.

The accused was arrested on Thursday following the FIR filed by the alleged rape victim.

In a related development, the state government on Friday ordered medical examination of all the inmates of the shelter home to identify other sexual harassment victims.

Meanwhile, chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan here on Friday reviewed the security situation in the all the shelter homes and girls’ hostels run in both government and private sectors in the state.