Arunachal Pradesh: Hostel Warden Accused of Sexual Abuse of Minors, Surrenders in POCSO Court

 OUR CORRESPONDENT

ITANAGAR: A hostel warden of a government residential school in Arunachal Pradesh, who stands accused of perpetrating heinous crimes against 21 innocent children for eight long years, surrendered before a POSCO court here on Monday. Yumken Bagra, the hostel warden of the school at Karo village under Monigong circle in Shi-Yomi district, surrendered before the court of Justice Jaweplu Chai, special judge POSCO, at Yupia near here, after his bail granted on February 23 this year was suo motu cancelled by the Gauhati High Court. The accused appeared personally in court along with his counsel, Karyom Dabi. "The accused is hereby taken into custody and remanded to judicial custody at Jully jail for 14 days. The jail authority shall produce the accused either physically or virtually after the expiration of his remand period," the court said in its order.

The Gauhati High Court had, on July 21, suo moto, cancelled the bail granted to the accused by the trial court. The HC said in its statement, "The conscience of the Court has been shaken by the way in which a case of such grave magnitude and sensitive nature has been dealt with in an absolutely cavalier fashion by granting bail to the main accused without assigning any plausible reasons. The larger issue that bothers the mind of the court is regarding the safety of the victims of the ghastly act of sexual assault after the release of the accused on bail." Bagra (33) sexually assaulted 21 children between the ages of 6 and 14.

In November 2022, a case was registered in Monigaon, Shiyomi district, regarding the sexual exploitation of children. Earlier, there was a complaint that the warden of the hostel sexually assaulted two twin sisters inside the hostel. Initially, the complaint was reported on November 1 of last year. A case was registered in Tato, the headquarters town of Shiyomi district, where the initial investigation took place. Later, the case was transferred to the Special Investigation Team (SIT) of the Arunachal Pradesh police, headed by Deputy SP Muir Basar Kamdak, police spokesman Rohit Rajbir Singh informed.

"The accused worked as a warden in the school from 2014 to 2022. There may be more victims of his assault, but a thorough investigation by the two sisters who filed the complaint has now revealed 21 victims, ranging in age from 6 to 14 years, male and female," Singh said. At the time of molestation, the affected girls were in the first and fifth grades. However, now they have grown up and settled down. We could have filed a charge sheet on the basis of the complaint based on the statement of the sisters and charged the arrested accused, but our aim was to bring justice to all the victims and find more victims who are silent and not coming forward, Singh added. Out of these 21 victims, six children were subjected to escalating sexual assaults. Other students were subjected to sexual abuse by the accused in different ways. The spokesperson added that police recovered the obscene videos from the phones of the accused. "We are sure that the accused has assaulted many more children in this long period of 8 years, as we have received complaints from students of the 2019 to 2022 batches only. The accused was arrested after a lot of hiding, and even one of his accomplices, O. Pertin, who helped him hide, was also arrested under the act of harbouring a criminal. However, the accused managed to get bail from a trial court here," Singh said. A charge sheet has been filed against him under Section 376 AB of the POCSO Act.

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