Sami Ahmad
PATNA—Prime Minister Narendra Modi often shows concern for Muslim women but the case of Buxar needs his urgent attention where a father has been awarded a life sentence following the sexual exploitation of his two minor daughters on the advice of a ‘Tantrik’ to enable him to get a son. The family had no son.
The concerned Tantrik named Ajay Kumar, too, has been sentenced to a life term while the mother and Mausi (mother’s sister) have been awarded a 20-year jail term each.
The information about some black magic for a son had been reported earlier, too, but this sort of sexual exploitation was not known to the public. The Tantriks used to ask for some sacrifice for some wishes like having a son, but the Buxar incident was quite horrible and unreported.
In this case, the police and the judiciary seem to have done their job well but the local media was not up to the mark in covering this judgment by a POCSO (Protection of children against sexual offenses) court. The local media chose to publish this news only in the Buxar edition or inside pages of the Patna edition.
According to Dainik Jagran, POCSO court’s judge Mankameshwar Prasad Chaube pronounced the sentence in the case that was registered on April 28, 2022. At the time of registration of the case, the victims were aged 14 and 16. Both had accused five people including their father, mother and Mausi. They had accused that their sexual exploitation continued for many years but they were not able to complain about it in the beginning.
It is reported that the Tantrik had made the accused believe that the reason for not having a son was the two daughters. The Tantrik also told the father to have sexual relations with his daughters to get a son. Later, the Tantrik too got involved in this savage act.
The court has declared the accused guilty under sections 376, 34 of IPC and Section 4 of the POCSO act. They have been fined also.
Special prosecutor of POCSO court Suresh Kumar said that the case is related to Rajpur police station.
According to Kumar, the two girls have been sexually exploited since 2012 with the consent of their mother and Mausi.
The accused father and mother had no son and desperately wanted to have one. One person called Jay Lal had advised them to meet Tantarik Ajay Kumar. The Tantrik told them that the father needs to have sexual relation with the daughters to have a son. Incidentally, the duo got a son too.
After the son was born, Tantrik got bold and asked the couple to have a special religious function.
According to the media reports, in this function both the father and the Tantrik sexually exploited the two girls. As the girls grew, they approached police personnel and made complaints about it.
The then SP of Buxar Niraj Kumar Singh asked the women police station to register the cases and the police arrested the accused.
Reports suggest that India is at 189th position out of 201 countries/territories in terms of female-to-male ratio. Among Asian countries, its position is 42nd out of 51 countries/territories.
According to the census data of 2011, the ratio of girl child to boy child in Bihar was 916 girls per 1000 boys.
