Abandoned by parents, a 16-year old girl who was trafficked for prostitution and sexually assaulted by several men in Odisha and even outside the State has approached the apex court to transfer her complaint pending in a Goa court to Odisha.
On the petition filed by NGO Child Rights that rescued her, the apex Bench of Justices Ranjan Gogoi and PC Pant issued notice to all the accused persons named by the girl and the Goa Government seeking their response on transfer of the case.
The tragedy struck for the girl, a resident of Odisha, when she decided to step out of her home tired of the mental and physical torture by her step-mother. Her mother had passed away when she was a child and her father never cared for her upbringing. She contacted a Facebook friend who put her in touch with a male friend. The web of contacts landed her before a pimp, a woman named Rubina, who made brisk business by making her virtually sleep with three to four men every day.
It was almost a month that she had been away from home and neither her father nor anybody in the family filed a missing complaint or sought to search her. On July 8, 2014, the victim was taken to Goa and lodged in a resort. Suffocated by constant sexual exploitation and the physical and mental trauma notwithstanding, the girl made a SOS call to police who rescued her and put her in a child rescue home. But situation there was even horrible as she was subjected to severe torture and deprived of food.
While the Goa Police had registered a crime on July 14, 2014 under several sections of the Immoral Traffic (Prevention) Act, 1956, Indian Penal Code, Goa Children’s Act and POSCO Act and investigation was still pending, the victim made good her escape from the rescue home and changed trains to reach Odisha. On reaching Bhubaneshwar, NGO Child Rights rescued her and kept her in their safe custody.
Filing the petition to transfer the criminal case from Goa to Odisha, the NGO through advocate Sanjeeb Panigrahi argued that no merit will be served with the case pending in Goa court as all the accused and the victim belong to Odisha. Moreover, substantial cause of action had occurred in Odisha where even the case witnesses reside that will aid smooth completion of the trial.