'Raped' by Instagram friend, Ghaziabad girl, 13, kills self

GHAZIABAD: A 13-year-old girl was found hanging in her room on Wednesday, a couple of days after she was allegedly assaulted and raped on her first meet with a youth she had befriended on Instagram.
On Wednesday afternoon, the girl went to her room after returning from a medical test along with her parents. Two hours later, her mother opened the door to her room and found her hanging from the ceiling fan.The accused, Himanshu Soni (22) — who works with his father at his jewellery store in Modinagar — was arrested on Wednesday.
Police said the girl had been friends with Himanshu for almost six months. “They met on Instagram and started talking to each other after exchanging numbers. On Monday, the accused called the girl near her house to meet her for the first time. They went to a hotel in Modinagar. Since the owner was known to Himanshu, the staff gave them a room without IDs,” said Subhash Chandra Pandey, the SHO of Modinagar police station.
The teenager resisted Himanshu’s attempts, but was thrashed. “He slapped her a few times and forced himself on her. After almost two hours, he dropped the girl at a distance from her locality and left. She shut herself in her room and asked her parents not to disturb her. She skipped her meals too,” Pandey said.
When her parents finally managed to get her to open the door, they found her crying. “After much persuasion, she confided in her parents and told them what had happened,” the SHO said.
While going out on Monday, the girl had told her parents she would attend her friend’s birthday party.
“We found some injury marks around her neck. When we asked her about them, she revealed it all,” her father said. “My daughter was in Class VIII and was a brilliant student. She had topped her class last year with 92% marks,” he added.
After the girl’s parents lodged a complaint, the cops asked for a medical test on Wednesday.
“Since our daughter was depressed, we took her to a restaurant for lunch on our way back. After we returned home around 4pm, she went to her room and we went for a nap. When her mother woke up around 6pm and went to her room to check on our daughter, she found her hanging from the ceiling fan,” the father added.
DCP (rural) Vivek Yadav said the owner of the hotel where Himanshu had taken the girl on Monday was also arrested along with his younger brother. CCTV footage, he said, showed the two entering the room at 6.53pm and exiting it at 8.30pm.
“Following a complaint by her father, an FIR was registered against Himanshu under sections 376 (rape) and 363 (kidnapping) of the IPC, and provisions of the Pocso Act. The accused was arrested on Wednesday morning from his house. The hotel owner and his brother were also picked up. The girl’s statement was recorded and a medical test conducted on Wednesday. Late that night, we received information that she had died by suicide. The body was sent for an autopsy, whose report is awaited,” he added.