The sessions court on Thursday convicted a 42- year-old man for raping his minor daughter. The scrap dealer was sentenced to 10 years of rigorous imprisonment. The 13-year-old daughter who lived with her family in the slums of Jogeshwari in suburban Mumbai was raped by her father for over two years, the police said.Police also told the court that the victim also became pregnant once and was forced to abort. Although the mother aided the father in concealing the brutality, she was not made an accused in the case. The medical tests conducted on the victim supported the case and revealed that she had undergone surgery.After two years of torture, the girl fled from the house and took shelter at the house of a neighbour who took the victim to the police and registered a complaint. The victim, a school dropout, was later handed over to a local NGO, where she lives now. A woman neighbour who was one of the prime witnesses in the case, deposed how the victim was constantly kept under stress and never allowed to move around alone.“Though the mother had supported her daughter in the case, it became clear only at the end that she had in fact tried to conceal the fact that her daughter was victimised for over two years,” said advocate Dinanath Joshi.The accused had maintained that his daughter was mentally unstable and he was wrongly implicated. However, based on the medical evidence and neighbours’ deposition, the court sentenced the accused to 10 years rigorous imprisonment.
