In a heart-wrenching incident, a class XII student in Maharashtra committed suicide after being abused for over a year by his hostel mates.
As per the sources, the boy’s body was found hanging from the school library’s ceiling on Saturday morning, just 3 days after his birthday. The boy was residing at Sevadal Boys Hostel in Chandrapur in Maharashtra.
The horrific details of the sexual abuse came to light when the police recovered an 18-page-long suicide note written by the boy. The note revealed shocking details about the abuse he was going through for a long time. As per the note, the boy mentioned that he has been an inmate of the hostel since he was a Class V and has been the victim of multiple sexual assaults over a period of more than a year.
He not only mentioned the names of his hostel roommates and a hostel guard for sexually assaulting him but also mentioned that he was last sexually assaulted on January 15, on his birthday.
Sharing the details, the sub-divisional police officer Shilwant Nandedkar mentioned:
“He hanged himself in his Seva Dal hostel room on January 18. The 18-page suicide note was found on Monday. He has given explicit details of the sexual assaults after which we arrested the 14 boys staying in the same hostel as well as its watchman.”
Based on the suicide note the police have arrested 14 people including three hostel staffers. Out of the 11 students who were booked for sexual harassment, eight are minors and all of them are residents of the same hosel.
This horrific incident has been one of the worst incidents reported so far in the country. What makes the crime so shocking is the fact that most of the accused are minors. As per the amended Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act, any aggravated sexual assault on minors, irrespective of the gender of the victim is a crime punishable by death. And, this is applicable even if the culprits are below the age of 18. As per the Juvenile Justice Act (amended in 2015), juveniles can be tried as adults based on the nature of the crime they have committed.
At IFORHER, we are mourning the death of this young boy, who became the victim of our sex-deprived society. We are not only disheartened but also broken by the cruelty of the crime. We wonder what kind of a society are we living in where kids are turning into abusers for other helpless kids.
If this news doesn’t wake us up from our slumber to take steps to stop abuse, then what will?
