16-yr-old French student on exchange programme molested by host's father in Delhi
New Delhi: A 16-year-old French national, who had come to Delhi on a school exchange programme, was allegedly sexually assaulted by the father of an Indian student, hosting her in Delhi. A First Information Report (FIR) was filed a week later, based on the complaint of the teenager.
In her statement to the police, the French teenager said that her host student's father, 55, sexually assaulted her, on the evening of October 18 when she was alone in the room she was put up in at the family's apartment in Saket in south Delhi.
A case under relevant sections of the Indian Penal Code and also under the stringent Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act has been filed against the accused, police said.
"...While I was packing my bags for Jaipur, her father came to the room and was giving me general advice... I was sitting on the bed and packing...and he was standing in front and staring at me...he came closer to me and hugged me and said 'Don't worry, it's going to be okay'...I didn't understand what he meant...he strongly tried to touch my breast...he hugged me again...in an uncomfortable manner...and it was painful...he took my hand forcefully to bring it between his legs...I was completely under trauma and shocked," the girl said in her complaint.
According to the girl’s complaint, an Indian student had stayed with her in France during the previous exchange programme in May-June.
On October 13, when the French girl came to India, she was assigned to stay with the same student whose parents received her at the airport, the complaint said.
According to the police, the girl shared her ordeal with some of her friends in the bus in which they were on travelling to another city. When the girl started crying, her friends narrated the incident to women teachers in the group following which a French teacher alerted the Embassy and her parents, police said.
The student was immediately shifted with another host family for the rest of the trip.
