Mumbai Crime: Mother uses Instagram to nail daughter's molester

Illustration/Ravi Jadhav

A 15-year-old boy who sexually assaulted his classmate is now paying for the crime after he had the audacity to slide into the girl's DMs on Instagram. A day after he forced himself on her, he sent a slew of sexual messages to the survivor, not suspecting that her mother was reading it. The worried mum then posed as the girl to get the truth out of the accused, leading to his detention.

The minor accused and the 15-year-old survivor were classmates in a prominent south Mumbai school. On July 21, the girl got a call from the accused's sister, who also studied in the same class. The sister told her that a bunch of classmates were meeting at her house to resolve some dispute. When the survivor got there, the accused's parents were not home. His sister too left the house to have dinner with relatives.

Representation pic

Around 8.45 pm, the girl's mother called to ask why she was late, and the survivor returned home. "When my daughter came back from meeting her classmate, she said she had a head ache and went to bed without dinner. That is when I realised something was wrong," the mother told the police.

Insta investigation
The next day, there was a constant stream of messages on the girl's Instagram, which was open on her mum's phone. The mother grew more concerned when she saw that the accused was sending her lewd messages. She posed as her daughter and replied to the messages to get to the bottom of the matter. She then took screenshots and print-outs of the DMs and confronted her daughter. The minor revealed that the accused had hugged and tried to kiss her forcefully, and although she pushed him away, he forced himself on her. The girl's mother called up the accused and told him to confess his crime to his mother. The two mothers spoke on the phone, when the boy's mum asked for forgiveness and said she had taken his phone away.

Girl was traumatised
Meanwhile, on seeing the girl traumatised and feverish for two days, the mother told her husband about the incident on July 23. The girl refused to go to school for four days, and when she finally went back on July 26, she said her classmates looked at her differently. On July 27, her parents met the school principal, as they did not want her ordeal to repeat with anyone else. The class teacher confirmed that the survivor seemed depressed and was not eating. The principal called the accused's parents, but the father claimed he was out of station and unaware of what had happened. The principal did not allow the accused to attend school till his parents came.

Eventually, the girl's parents took her to see a counsellor on July 31. All this time, the boy's parents requested her parents not to file a case. But they finally registered an FIR with the DB Marg police on August 3, under the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act and the IT Act. "A case was filed under POCSO and IT Act, and the minor was sent to a children's correction home," confirmed Suryakant Banger, senior police inspector, DB Marg police.

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No. of days the girl skipped school after the assault

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