Authorities rescued a 17-year-old girl from a passenger train bound for Rajasthan's Kota after being repeatedly raped by her in-laws and fleeing a forced marriage, police said on Sunday.
Kota's Child Welfare Committee (CWC) chairman Kaniz Fatima said Railway Protection Force (RPF) saved the teenage girl from the Gorakhpur Avadh Express train on Saturday afternoon. Childline brought her before the CWC later that evening.
The girl was initially in shock. But she started sharing her experience with the help of counseling.
India Today said the survivor was a guaduation second-year student in Deoria, Uttar Pradesh. Her parents and uncle forced her to marry a man from a neighboring village on Nov. 30, 2020, against her will.
Following the wedding, the girl said her husband's brother and sister-in-law's husband repeatedly raped her. When she told her husband and father-in-law about the situation, they said they had "purchased" her from her maternal uncle. They instructed her to do whatever they asked her.
When she refused, her husband and father-in-law took her to an undisclosed location. The victim added her brother-in-law and sister-in-law's husband took turns in raping her for months. The victim also claimed that they made a video of her naked and posted it on social media. The girl somehow managed to escape captivity and travel to her uncle's house in Deoria.
The victim requested that her uncle file a complaint against her husband and in-laws. But they reportedly prevented her from doing so. She ran away from her uncle's house on April 7. She believed her uncle could not lend a helping hand. Hence, she took the train the next day.
Ashok Yadav, a sub-inspector at Kota RPF told the media outlets they immediately notified the Railway Police as the Traveling Ticket Examiner believed the girl had run away from home. The Childline team then rescued the minor.
The CWC took note of the girl's ordeal after hearing her story. It also filed charges against the victim's relatives for allegedly "selling" her into marriage and her in-laws for physical exploitation.
Reports claim that one child in India goes missing every eight minutes. Millions of children go missing, resulting in forced labor, slavery, and sex labor. To solve the country's issue, the government unveiled an official website called "track child" to help the public track down lost children.
