Mumbai:
The miserably familiar theme of police indifference in cases of domestic abuse emerged yet again, a day after MiD DAY broke the horrifying story of a teenager who was bitten, beaten and stripped by her abusive, alcoholic father.
The 15-year-old girl whose father assaulted her because she failed to save him from a drunken brawl also revealed that he would intimidate her with the basest of threats to keep her out of school.
The teenager, who scored 70 per cent in Class 8, told MiD DAY yesterday that though she wanted to continue studying, her father had been forcing her to quit school.
"I have been sitting at home for a month doing nothing because my father has threatened me that if I go to school, he would send me to a whore house or sell me to some pimp," she said.
'Cops snubbed us'She said that though she had complained to the Mulund police four times in the past against her father's brutal assaults, the police refused to file a complaint, saying that a family fight was none of their business.
"The past month my father has been abusing me and my mother routinely. We approached the police station on four occasions but nobody paid heed to us. They dismissed us by saying, 'This is your family matter. The police cannot interfere'.
"However, late on Saturday, an FIR was finally registered after the intervention of a Maharashtra Navnirman Sena activist, and her father was arrested on Monday. Even so, the girl and her mother were forced to sit at the police station for the whole day before taking down her complaint.
At the police station, the accused, who was made to sit in a corner in the same room as his daughter and wife, was gesturing to them not to open their mouth in front of the cops.
"My husband would abuse me and my daughter all the time but this time he crossed all the limits. Every time he assaults anyone in the family, my two younger children run away from the house so that they avoid witnessing such violence at home," said the mother.
"We finally approached Darshan Joshi of the MNS for guidance. He helped us a lot in getting the case registered. Otherwise, this time too the police would have sent us home, saying this is not their lookout," said the survivor's mother.
MNS's Joshi said, "The girl and her mother came to me to with their problem. Initially, even I found it difficult to lodge a complaint, but finally an FIR was registered, following which her father was arrested."