New Delhi: The police chargesheet filed against Radhe Shyam, the priest in a Delhi crematorium who had been arrested for raping a nine-year-old Dalit girl on August 1, states that he had allegedly also sexually assaulted the girl in the past, the Indian Express reported.Disclosure statements from Shyam – as well as the three others apprehended in the case, Kuldeep Singh, Laxmi Narayan and Saleem Ahmed – formed the basis for the charges drawn against them, as well as statements from public witnesses and footage from CCTV cameras.The police chargesheet records Shyam as saying that he had, in the past, got the victim to give him massages, had made her watch pornography and that he had “touched her” in the past.On the day of the incident, Shyam had again asked the victim for a massage following which Ahmed was sent to “buy jalebi” and Shyam and Singh took turns raping the girl, according to the chargesheet.When the victim stopped breathing, the accused got “rattled”, the chargesheet continues, which is when they decided that they would tell her parents that she died of electrocution. They allegedly poured water on her to make the story seem more convincing. Shyam had called the victim’s mother to the scene at 6 pm to tell her that her daughter had been electrocuted. When the mother saw the victim, she had asked Shyam why her clothes were drenched. According to the mother’s account, the priest had tried to convince her not to call the police, telling her that an autopsy would be conducted and her organs would be sold. He instead insisted that she be cremated and forcibly carried out the cremation process.The mother’s account is confirmed by the police chargesheet, which alleges that Shyam tried to “create fear” in the mother’s mind about her daughter’s organs being stolen. It also alleges that the accused offered the mother Rs 20,000 and to cremate the body for free and that the cremation was carried out despite the mother’s repeated objections.The police also claim that a bedsheet and a mobile phone were thrown into the pyre. The bedsheet was the one used while the accused assaulted the victim and the mobile phone was, allegedly, the one used to watch the porn videos. The forensic team had found traces of the mobile phone in the pyre, the Hindustan Times reported.By the time locals arrived at the scene and pulled the victim’s body off the pyre, it was already considerably charred.The chargesheet reads that the accused took advantage of the parents’ “poverty, illiteracy and their affiliation to an oppressed section of society” and were able to “oppress their thought process and forcibly cremate the deceased.”Delhi’s Patiala House court took cognisance of the chargesheet on September 9 and listed the matter to be heard on September 29. Production warrants were also issued to the four accused.Also read: Delhi Minor Rape: Court Takes Cognisance of Chargesheet, Hearing on September 29The accused have been booked under Sections 302 (punishment for murder), 304 (punishment for culpable homicide not amounting to murder), 376 (punishment for rape), 341 (punishment for wrongful restraint), 506 (punishment for criminal intimidation), 201 (causing disappearance of evidence of office) and 34 (acts done by several persons in furtherance of common intention) of the Indian Penal Code, along with Section 6 (punishment for aggravated penetrative sexual assault) of the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act.
