Crimes against women are on the rise in Jharkhand as over the past few days, two rape FIRs were lodged against relatives of victims in Koderma and Chatra, a dead body of a girl was found in Chatra and another went missing in the same district.

An 18-year-old girl of Sayal village in Meral panchayat lodged a complaint on Monday with the Pathalgadda police station against her maternal uncle maternal uncle Sukhram Munda for raping her. She said he had first raped her when she took her cattle for grazing to a forest area on July 18, 2020, threatening her of dire consequences if she opened her mouth.

“He kept raping me on assurance of marriage,” the girl said, adding that he even forced her to have an abortion nursing home in Nawabgunj locality of the neighbouring Hazaribagh district on January 11.

Upon her return, the girl told about the incident to her parents and lodged the FIR. However, the accused is absconding.

Officer-in-charge of Pathalgadda police station Avinash Kumar said they had registered an FIR-4/21 against Munda and searches are on to nab him.

In Koderma, another FIR was lodged by the mother of a seven-year-old girl against her neighbour Ramvilas Paswan (30).

She said that Paswan took the minor to her house where he raped her, after which the girl came back to her home crying and revealing about the incident. Koderma police station officer-in-charge Dwarika Ram said an FIR was lodged and the girl was sent for medical tests. “We will arrest Paswan soon,” he added.

On Sunday evening, Giddhore police in Chatra found the dead body of 14-year-old Supriya Kumari a.k.a. Dolly from a pond.

Her uncle Sonu Gupta said Dolly was supposed to appear in the matriculation exam this year.

He alleged that the suspect Rahul Yadav was released by the police, who did not take her case seriously when she went missing. Superintendent of Police Rishav Kumar Jha said they will solve this case in the next two days.

In another incident, Basanti Devi of Bakchuma village under Kanhachatti block registered an FIR at the Rajpur police station requesting officials to find her 22-year-old daughter Mamta Kumari. She said her daughter went out of the house on January 2 but did not come back since then. Officer-in-charge of the police station Anil Kumar a search operation was launched to find Mamta.

Narrow escape for Bihar family

The car on fire at the Ranchi-Patna Highway (NH-33) on Tuesday. Picture by Vishvendu Jaipuriar

A family hailing from Bihar’s Aurangabad had a narrow escape on Tuesday when their car suddenly caught fire on Ranchi-Patna Highway (NH-33) in Massipiddi under Muffasil police station of Hazaribagh. The driver of the car made a wise decision of stopping the car as soon as he spotted smoke coming from the engine. However, it completely got gutted before firefighters could reach the location.