A 13-year-old girl was allegedly raped for several months by a teacher in a madrasa (school) in Saharsa town of Bihar and she had to undergo an abortion.

Making the incident more abominable, a panchayat called by the accused tried to stop the victim and her family from approaching police by offering Rs 10,000 as hush money.

The police have arrested the main accused Muhammad Imtiyaz and were in the process of forwarding him to jail on Tuesday.

The girl stays with her maternal grandparents while her parents work as domestic help and labourers in Delhi.

“The teacher was doing bad things with me for the last three months. He threatened to kill me if I told anything to anyone. I started having a stomach ache and my nani (maternal grandmother) took me to a hospital,” the girl told reporters.

At the hospital in Saharsa, the doctors found that she had become pregnant, but the foetus had died leading to complications. They operated her to surgically remove it.

The girl’s mother came from Delhi after getting to know about her condition and decided to approach the police, but the accused teacher called a panchayat and offered Rs 10,000 to the family to keep quiet.

However, on October 8, the family registered an FIR against the teacher and seven others who were present in the panchayat. The victim is still in the hospital.