A teacher of Genius Public school, Bokaro, has been arrested on the charge of sexually assaulting a nursery-class student. The incident apparently happened on September 6, inside a school toilet.The three-year-old has undergone a medical examination and the results are awaited.According to Inspector A.K. Jha, 20-year-old Manoj Sao called out to the girl from inside the toilet and sexually assaulted her there. Too young to understand what had happened, the girl didn’t talk about it when she went home. But her mother noticed something amiss and questioned her. The girl’s father, Manoj Kumar, returned from work in the evening and heard about it, he decided to go to police. An FIR was filed at the Bokaro-based Chas police station at 10.30 pm on September 6. Says Kumar: ‘‘I did it because I thought if he (Sao) was left unpunished, he might do something worse in the future.’’Sao was booked under Section 376 of the Indian Penal Code, arrested and remanded to judicial custody the next day. His bail plea was rejected by the court in Bokaro.Since the beginning of this year alone, Jharkhand has seen 507 registered rape cases. East Singhbhum (Jamshedpur) district tops the list with 47 cases, followed by Hazaribagh with 45, Ranchi with 40 and Bokaro with 29. Incidentally, the incidents of rape are far fewer in Naxalite-infested areas like Palamau, Latehar, Garhwa, Chatra and Giridih.
