BENGALURU: A 25-year-old school security guard confessed to sexually assaulting a three-year-old girl on the campus of an Indiranagar school on Monday. Indiranagar is an eastern neighborhood of Bengaluru, the capital of Karnataka in eastern India.
Initially, the school denied the incident happened. There was a protest against the school, and parents and supporters, including the child’s parents, clashed with police. Police arrested a female protester and detained others.
Police arrested the guard on Monday night, after receiving a lead from the survivor’s sister. The sister identified the guard as the perpetrator. On Tuesday, the three-year-old survivor also identified the guard, in an identification parade.
Madhu Chandra reports that the three-year-old, a pre-nursery student, was crying when her parents picked her up from the school on Monday afternoon. The parents noticed injuries on her body and the child said, “Uncle, school”, prompting the parents to visit the police.
It has been almost a year since the previous report of a sexual assault at a school. That previous incident was at a Jeevan Bima Nagar school on October 31 last year. That year, there had been a number of sexual assaults on city school campuses, and there was a public outcry to make schools safer for children.
The girl’s father a restaurant employee, said, “I picked her up around 12 noon. And when she reached home, she was crying constantly. Even when her mother asked her what had happened, she continued to cry. After realizing that she had been sexually assaulted, we took her to Bowring Hospital where we were told to inform the police.”
Students at school (File photo).
The parents registered a police complaint on Monday night. While medical tests were carried out, the older sister of the three-year-old girl told police about the security guard.
Sateesh Kumar N, deputy commissioner of police, Bengaluru East told reporters what the sister told them. “She told us that on previous occasions, she had seen the watchman calling out to the victim by name, making her sit on his lap and hug and gifting her chocolates.”
The child went to Bowring Hospital for treatment on Tuesday afternoon. The girl’s father said they are still waiting for a medical report, and “I will take my daughter out of this school.”
On Tuesday, the day after the indicent, the school’s secretary denied the incident happened on school premises, claiming they had CCTV footage of the student in her classroom for more than three hours before leaving for home and also visuals of her father picking up the child. The CCTV footage has not been released.
