The Mahila police station here has filed a case against five accused, including the doctor and hostel warden, for the rape and hush-hush delivery of a 14-year-old girl who studied at the Kasturba Gandhi Residential School in Manjhiaon, some 20km from Garhwa town.

The girl, a Class VIII student of the government residential school, gave birth to a baby boy on June 26 this year at a government-run primary health centre. The entire incident was hushed up for months till someone tipped off the child welfare committee (CWC) head Upendra Dubey, who started a probe.

In her statement to the police on Friday in the presence of her mother, the girl said she had an affair with Chandan Mehta, 21, a youth she knew, and would meet at his farm.

However, as she is a minor, even consensual sex is treated as rape in the eyes of the law.

The girl, in her complaint, added that during Dussehra, the accused had allegedly raped her and promised to marry her.

She added that back in her residential school, she did not realise she was pregnant and whenever she had a stomach ache she took “normal medicines”. She said she did not inform her mother about what happened.

According to her statement, on June 26, her stomach ache worsened and she went to the government primary health centre with other schoolgirls. After some hours, she gave birth to a healthy baby boy. That’s when her hostel warden Snehlata Singh, auxiliary nurse-cum-midwife Nirmala Kumari, the doctor Govind Seth and school management committee president Lal Bahadur told her that as she was a minor, she should keep this delivery a secret. ANM Nirmala took her child.

Police have lodged a case under Sections of 376, 370, 120B and 201 of the IPC and section4/16 of the Pocso (Protection of Children from Sexual Offences) Act against five persons, the father of the child Chandan, warden Snehlata, ANM Nirmala, Dr Seth and school management committee president Bahadur, Garhwa SP Ashwini Kumar Sinha said.

Chandan surrendered before the special court for children in Garhwa on Saturday afternoon.

This apart, two more cases of irregularities have emerged from the same school in November. On November 14, a 14-year-old girl was severely burnt, waist down, in the school kitchen. A CWC probe revealed she had been cooking. The case has been referred to the Juvenile Justice Board.

Another 14-year-old student on November 22 killed herself by setting herself on fire at her maternal grandfather’s home, 2km from the school.

A probe revealed that her parents forced her to go to the residential school.