On Monday (4th December), the Maharashtra Police booked an accused identified as Uvaish Ansari for sexually assaulting a minor girl and threatening her in the Satara district of Maharashtra. The accused clicked derogatory pictures of the minor girl and used them to blackmail her for further sexual exploitation, as per the complaint.
The FIR has been booked under sections 354A, 354D, 376(2)(n), and 506 of the Indian Penal Code, 1860. Sections of the POCSO Act have also been imposed against the accused.
As per the FIR copy obtained by OpIndia, the crime begun in the year 2021 when the girl was 17 years old. The girl mentioned in the complaint filed on 4th December this year that she met the accused while they played a PUB-G game online in the year 2021. The accused who is a resident of Hamidpur, Uttar Pradesh extended his hand of ‘friendship’ towards the girl. Later they began chatting on WhatsApp and also got engaged on other social media platforms.
This continued for around a year until February 2023, when the accused pressed to meet the girl in person. He arrived at Satara, Maharashtra after which the duo went to a nearby fort named the Ajinkyatara. The accused molested the girl after he met her and captured derogatory photos of her on his phone. He then blackmailed the girl using those photographs and dragged her to a local residency lodge. The accused sexually assaulted the girl and also recorded a derogatory video of her on his phone.
He threatened the girl and said that he would show her photographs to her parents and other villagers if she failed to fulfill his sexual demands. After the incident in February, the accused returned to Hamidpur. However, he continued to threaten the girl over social media platforms. He would ask the girl to send her nude pictures to him over Snapchat, failing which he would threaten her saying that he would send her derogatory photos and videos to her parents.
The girl was scared all these months so she could not seek help from her parents or relatives. The incident came to the fore recently on 1st December after the accused called the girl and said that he was coming to Satara to ‘meet’ her. The girl then told her family about the sexual assault after which a legal complaint was filed by her family members at District Police Station.
The complaint has been filed under sections 354A, 354D, 376(2)(n), and 506 of the Indian Penal Code, 1860, and also under sections 12 and 8 of the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act, 2012. Further investigations into the case are underway.
It is worth noting that the number of crime cases against women has increased in the state of Maharashtra in the past year. The National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) recently released a report in which it mentioned that the state had ranked fourth after Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, and Uttar Pradesh in recording rape cases against women. The state recorded 2,904 incidents of rape in 2022 and 2,295 cases of murder, the report said.
There was also a significant rise in the number of rioting cases in Maharashtra last year, which took the state to the top position in this category. These cases were registered under IPC sections 147 to 151 (about rioting and unlawful assembly) as per the NCRB report.
