Panaji: A three-to-four-year-old child was allegedly raped inside an abandoned building near Lohia Ground in Mapusa on Diwali night, with police yet to trace the accused. The girl, who belongs to a family of balloon sellers, was found injured and has been shifted to Goa Medical College and Hospital for treatment. Mapusa police detained a couple of suspects by Monday afternoon.Chief minister Pramod Sawant said that it will be ensured the accused is “kept permanently behind bars”.“People with such mentality should not exist in our society. Police will take strict action and ensure that he goes behind bars permanently,” he said.The girl was found by a group of motorcycle pilots stationed at a stand near the abandoned building. Tribal welfare minister Ramesh Tawadkar claimed “90 per cent” of such crimes in the tourist state are committed by “outsiders”. Such crimes should not happen in Goa or anywhere else in the country, he told PTI.Tawadkar said, “The person who has committed this crime has a demonic mentality.”“Goa is a tourist state. People from outside the state come here and 90% of people involved in such cases are those who have come to Goa from outside,” he added. However, he maintained people could not be stopped from coming to Goa to earn their livelihood.Around 8 pm on Diwali night, a group of motorcycle pilots had initially noticed a man holding the crying child’s hand and escorting her towards the area. However, assuming he was a family member, they did not suspect anything amiss. “We are used to balloon sellers roaming around here during the festive season with little children accompanying them. The child was crying, but walking away with him. So we thought he was known to her and the child was just fussing. We felt bad later, thinking we could have prevented it if we had realised his intentions. We were focused on getting customers when we saw him. But one pilot did call out to the man, asking him to take care of the child. Later, a pilot noticed the girl coming out crying from the abandoned building,” said Pundalik Neurekar, a motorcycle pilot and eyewitness.The girl emerged from the building around an hour and a half later. The pilots initially assumed she was crying because she had been separated from her family. They kept her with them and tried to pacify her.A woman working at a nearby tailoring shop then noticed the child and gave her a cloth to wrap herself in. On noticing blood on the girl, the pilots realised she may have been sexually assaulted and alerted the police.A Mapusa police team combed the area around 4 am in search of the accused, but the operation yielded no results. A forensic team collected samples from the crime scene on Monday morning.Police have also obtained CCTV footage from shops in Mapusa market and surrounding areas in an effort to identify the accused.“The man was wearing a jacket. He did not appear to be a local from around here, and he had a backpack on him,” said another motorcycle pilot, Mangaldas Gawas.
