A 55-year-old school teacher has been arrested in Davangere of Karnataka for allegedly sexually assaulting a seven-year-old girl who was his student. The accused, identified as Nagaraj, was the girl’s class teacher at the Anjaneya Primary School in Davangere. He was arrested on Tuesday, November 1, based on a complaint filed by the girl’s mother.
The incident came to light after the seven-year-old girl returned home from school with a high fever on October 27. The family initially assumed she was suffering from a regular flu, but when the fever did not come down even after administering medicines for several days, they took her to a government hospital in Davangere.
“Thinking it was a seasonal fever, we first took her to a neighbourhood doctor who prescribed her medicines for fever. But even after three days of medication, her fever did not reduce. On the night of October 30, she began complaining of pain in her private parts and we took her to the government hospital the next day,” said her grandmother Nasreen Taj. It was the doctor at the hospital, upon realising that the seven-year-old had been sexually assaulted, who immediately alerted the Davangere Women’s Police Station. On probing, the girl named her class teacher Nagaraj as the culprit.
“She told the police that the teacher had been sexually assaulting her for a long time. He would sexually assault her on the pretext of holding her back in class after everyone had left and told her to complete her homework. The same happened on October 27, when he held her back while there was no one left in the school. She had to go to his desk to get her homework checked, and there she spotted him watching a pornographic film. That’s when he assaulted her again,” Nasreen said.
The Davangere Women’s Police Station has charged Nagaraj under Section 354A (punishment for sexual harassment) of the Indian Penal Code and relevant sections of the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act. He is currently under judicial custody.