Uttar Pradesh: 28 yrs later woman reports rape by family members

Aligarh: Nearly 28 years after the incident, a woman has come forward to report her sexual assault as a seven-year-old child by male members of her step-father’s family.

The 35-year-old woman, wife of a former Army officer, told the police that the assaults continued till she was 19-years-old.

An FIR has now been filed based on her complaint in Uttar Pradesh’s Aligarh.

The woman claimed that initially police refused to lodge the FIR, after which she approached the SSP, National Commission for Women, and the grievance redressal portal of the Chief Minister.

The FIR was finally registered under IPC sections 376 (rape), 323 (voluntarily causing hurt), 504 (intentional insult with intent to provoke breach of peace), and 506 (criminal intimidation).

According to the FIR, one of the woman’s step-uncles first raped her when she was seven. She claimed that she narrated the entire incident to her mother and complained of stomach pain.

“But my mother gave me some medicine and asked me to keep quiet.”

Then a second step-uncle raped her, and it carried on.

The woman alleged that she was raped frequently at different locations till she was 19.

“After that, I tried my best to stop them as much as I could. They could not rape me but still outraged my modesty,” she said.

The woman got married in January 2011.

“After marriage, they tried to rape me whenever I went home to meet my mother but I resisted,” she added.

The woman, a mother of two minor girls, said that unable to cope with the mental trauma, she eventually informed her husband about what she had been going through.

“He supported me and encouraged me to fight against my exploitation,” she said.

“On April 11 this year, my husband took me to my step-father’s house to talk about the matter. When he narrated my horror story, he was beaten up. My mother supported them and did not trust me. Over the past four months, we have been trying to register an FIR. But now I have the support of my husband and will fight for justice till the last breath,” she added.

The women’s police Station House Officer Savita Dwivedi said, “The woman has filed a detailed complaint. All the aspects of the case are being probed.”