#India- Chastity, Virginity, Marriageability, and Rape Sentencing #Vaw  #Justice #mustread

ByI P Singh, TNN | Feb 11, 2013, 0

JALANDHAR: Even as a medical board set up to probe the alleged gang rape of a minor dalit girl is yet to finalize its report, police on Sunday added stringent sections of the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act, 2012, pertaining to ‘aggravated penetrative sexual assault‘, to the FIR.

Sections 5 and 6 of this Act have been invoked even as police officials till Saturday had been looking into “some grey areas” in the statement of the victim’s father. The Act also provides speedy trial by a special designated court.

Meanwhile, three accused arrested in the case after they surrendered before the police on Saturday were remanded in police custody till February 13 by a Nakodar court on Sunday. The three are distantly related to the girl and had pleaded innocence. However, the victim’s family has been holding on to the allegations it levelled on January 6, the day when the girl was first rushed to Lohian Hospital and then to Jalandhar Civil Hospital with life-threatening septicemia.

It was only after being shifted to the hospital that the family had alleged that the girl was raped on the night of January 28 in Mandhala Chhanna village. The girl was finally operated upon in Amritsar where her badly infected and ruptured uterus was removed by doctors to save her life and her intestine was repaired.

The victim’s family also alleged that on Saturday some “anganwari worker” visited their home and rebuked the girl’s mother, who fainted after that. She was rushed to the Civil Hospital in Lohian with the help of police personnel posted in the village on Saturda