Minor girl trafficked, raped; Delhi court jails 4

New Delhi: A fast track court here has sentenced a man to 10 years in jail for marrying a minor girl forcibly and then raping her for more than two months in illegal confinement. Terming the case as "a very disturbing tale of a minor girl", additional sessions judge Kaveri Baweja held guilty 30-year-old Rampal, a resident of Haryana who had "purchased" the girl for Rs 55,000.

The couple who had procured the girl from a placement agency under the pretext of hiring a maid have also been sentenced to seven year imprisonment while the man through whom the girl was handed over to Rampal was given a three- year jail term. The court accepted CBI prosecutor Sanjay Kumar`s submission that the couple had huge cash in bank accounts which is nothing but proceeds from illegal sale of minor girls as they did not have any other legal source of income. The CBI case was that between January and May 2010, Sunil and Jhalki, both natives of Bihar, approached a placement agency in outer Delhi on the pretext of hiring two maid servants. From the agency, they hired two girls and took them to a house in west Delhi. While working there, the girls became suspicious that the couple was involved in trafficking and decided to intimate the owner of their placement agency but were not allowed to make any phone call. One day, the couple asked the victim to accompany them on an excursion. When they returned home without her, the other girl sought to know about her whereabouts and was told that she has been employed elsewhere. After this, the other girl managed to escape and narrated the facts to the placement agency owner who tried to trace the victim but in vain and then moved the Delhi High Court which directed the CBI to probe the matter. Probe revealed that Sunil and Jhalki were engaged in trafficking of minor girls. They procured the minor girl in this case and sold her to one Subhash who molested and tortured her and forcibly got her married to Rampal, who had been looking for a girl to get married to. Rampal confined the girl in Haryana and raped her for over two and half months before she was recovered by the probe agency from village Belarkhan in Haryana on May 20, 2010. The court also imposed a total fine of Rs 39,000 on all convicts which was directed to be released as compensation for the victim. PTI