Nerul teacher held over minor’s rape

Mumbai: Navi Mumbai police has arrested a Nerul-based private school’s teacher, Raj Shukla, in the case where he allegedly twice raped a 13-year-old school girl. The police on Friday will approach the court to conduct a DNA test on the accused to examine his alleged role in the rape. Samples for the test will be taken on Friday itself.

Navi Mumbai police commissioner Hemant Nagrale said, “Our team arrested the accused and we will soon be producing him in court to take his custody.”

A police officer said that the team had taken the statements of the victim’s friends. They could not retrieve CCTV footage however as the incident took place quite some time ago. He said, “After coming to know that the victim was pregnant, we registered a case of rape and conducted her medical check-up in NMMC Hospital after which she aborted the child after taking permission.”

Police has also recovered a telephonic conversation allegedly containing voices of the accused, the victim, and her mother from relatives of the accused. Assistant commissioner of police, Nitin Kausadgikar, said, “We have got some recordings of a phone call between the victim and the accused after she got pregnant. The sister-in-law and friends of the accused were grilled for eight hours on Wednesday. Some messages and past records of the accused have been retrieved from his desktop and phones. We are still to interrogate him.”

Meanwhile a police source said, “The accused had a fight with the victim and her family in January 2016 after the girl did not attend exams on time due to health issues and her mother requested the accused to give them concession which he refused. The matter went to the principal.”

Earlier, a police team was sent to Delhi to nab Shukla who had been absconding for over a month.