Brahmapur: Police Saturday arrested a 57-year-old man, a high school teacher, for allegedly sexually abusing his own daughter for years and even after her marriage, days after she attempted suicide by setting herself on fire under Nimakhandi police limits in this city.
The 22-year-old woman poured petrol on herself at her in-laws’ house in Basudev Nagar area Thursday and is currently battling for her life at AIIMS, Bhubaneswar after suffering 90 per cent burns, police said.
The woman accused her father of repeated rape and sex ual exploitation in her dying declaration before the police at MKCG Medical College and Hospital, where she had been admitted initially. Police detained the man Friday and questioned him at the police station before formally arresting him Saturday. “The incident of her father’s sexual assault came to light when the victim disclosed his name along with two others during recording of her statement. The father was arrested based on prima facie evidence against him,” Additional Superintendent of Police (Brahmapur) Alok Jena said.
The woman alleged that her father had been sexually abusing her before her marriage and continued to assault her even after she got married April 30 last year, he said. Investigators seized mobile phones belonging to both the man and his daughter and found a series of chat exchanges indicating he had raped and subsequently blackmailed her, according to police.
Based on the complaint and preliminary findings, officers registered a case (220/26) and intensified the investigation. The accused was produced in court following his arrest and remanded to judicial custody. Police said the investigation is ongoing and that anyone else found complicit will also be arrested.
Asked about the immediate provocation behind the victim’s alleged attempt to end her life, Jena said the accused had borrowed Rs 11 lakh from the victim’s father-in-law but did not repay the amount, leading to a near-total breakdown in relations between the two families. “The father-in-law asked the victim to ask her father to return the money.
When she did so, the accused allegedly blackmailed her and threatened to make her intimate pictures public, following which she took the extreme step,” he said. “The scientific team has visited the crime spot and collected some physical and material evidence,” he added, noting that a case has been registered at the Nimakhandi police station.
Police also questioned several family members, including the woman’s mother, her maternal uncle, her paternal uncle and her aunt.