11 tribal girls in AP hostel allege sexual abuse by tutor
Hyderabad: Eleven minor tribal girls residing in a students' hostel run by an NGO in Nalgonda district of Andhra Pradesh, have alleged sexual assault by their tutor for the past five months, police said on Saturday.
According to Nalgonda Superintendent of Police T. Prabhakar Rao, a case wason Friday registered against accused R. Harish following a complaint by the victims.
Harish, who was appointed by the NGO management was also staying in the same hostel in Enemeedha Tanda under Tungaturthy Gram Panchayat, where the abuse happened. He allegedly threatened the girls and sexually abused them, a police official said.
As many as 78 students comprising boys and girls are staying in the hostel.
"Harish was on leave for three days last week, when girls came out and informed their kin about their trauma. We immediately swung into action and sent the girls for medical examination. All the children are below 13 years of age. We formed special teams to catch the accused," Rao told PTI.
However, sources in the department said that police have already nabbed Harish and are questioning him.
The couple - Srinivas and Sarita - who are running the NGO will also be questioned on any violations in running the hostel, the police official said. As of now, a case under relevant sections of protection of children from sexual assault besides cheating, has been registered, he added.
Meanwhile, a police official from Nalgonda district said that a case under Nirbhaya Act was being filed against the accused. A social organisation has also filed a complaint with the State Human Rights Commission demanding justice for victims.
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Exactly a year ago, a 23-year-old physiotherapy student was gang raped on a moving bus in Delhi. That led to a national outrage with people questioning inefficiency of the government to provide security to women. There was such anger with protests across the nation that anyone would have thought it would be the last rape in the nation. That wasn't to be. 
Safety of women in the national capital was questioned, and in fact that was one of the reasons why chief minister Sheila Dikshit and the Congress suffered a humiliated defeat at the hands of political newcomer Arvind Kejriwal and his party Aam Aadmi Party. Political implications apart, the December 16 gang rape made headlines in international media, exposing how insecure women are in India. Despite the magnanimity of the most brutal rape of the country, very little has changed in one year.The conviction rate for rape is a mere 27 per cent which is why rapists aren't scared.The four accused in the December 16 rape case, gym instructor Vinay Sharma (20), bus cleaner Akshay Thakur (28), fruit-seller Pawan Gupta (19) and Mukesh Singh (26) were awarded death penalty as the court felt it was a rarest of rare cases. Main accused Ram Singh was found dead in jail while another is a minor.Notwithstanding pressure, the Central government in April amended the Anti-rape bill, which now provides life-term or death sentence for rape convicts. According to the new law, an offender can be sentenced to rigorous imprisonment that is not less than 20 years. The law also fixed age for consensual sex at 18 years. One thing that has changed is, none will take things lying down. But it doesn't mean that the incidents have gone down. Shockingly, a rape is reported every 20 minutes in India. A young girl's sexual harassment complaint resulted in the arrest of Tehelka editor Tarun Tejpal. The girl was bold enough to report against her boss, putting her career at stake. Neither death sentence nor new law has acted as a deterrent. The number of rape cases in Delhi have almost doubled. Till November this year, 1,450 cases of rape cases were registered against 706 in 2012. There is an element of positivity about it, as police say that more women are coming forward to report rapes. But as Indian women are known for, not all aren't comfortable reporting about rape.The only mistake of a 23-year-old software engineer, who was kidnapped and raped in a cab Hyderabad, was that she trusted the cab drivers to take her to her hostel. But she ended up being raped.Unlike the Tehelka journalist, this girl was scared to report it, she filed a false complaint that there was an attempt to rape her. But the incident came to light when the police arrested the cab drivers, who admitted to raping her.Rapes are tarnishing the image of the country as a whole. Internationally, India is perceived as the rape capital with governments of foreign countries warning women against travel to India.A photojournalist was gang raped when on duty in Mumbai. That wasn't the first time for the accused, who thought when others didn't complain why would she? Experts debate if raping is a psychological problem? Most of the rapists won't have any remorse or guilt feeling. In many cases, they deny the crime or feel what they did wasn't wrong.There is a need for a systemic social change and the solution doesn't lie in the law, but in changing the mindset of people. 
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