Two clerics of Ahmedabad’s Bapunagar Madani Madarsa were booked for sexually and physically abusing a 13-year-old minor boy. The child is currently undergoing treatment at the Shardaben Hospital. The police have registered a case under POCSO against the clerics and have started investigations based on the family’s complaint.

Detailing the case, OpIndia reports:

According to exclusive information received by OpIndia through a reliable source, a daily wager, who lives in Gomtipur had sent the eldest of his six children, who is 13-year-old, to the Madani Madarsa in Bapunagar near him on 29th May 2022 for religious study during the summer vacation. On 30th May 2022, the parents were shocked when the child came home and told them about the inhuman act done to him by two clerics in the madarsa.

According to the child, he was also beaten up. He was taken to the nearby Shardaben Hospital for treatment as there were marks of beating on his body and injuries in the anal parts due to brutal sodomisation by the two clerics in the madarsa.

The father of the child informed that the eldest of his 6 children, aged 13 years, was studying in 7th standard in the government school no. 2. As the summer vacation was currently going on in the school, he had decided to send his son to a madarsa to study Islam as per the customs of his religion. On the morning of May 29, they took the child to the Madina Madarsa at Sundaramnagar in Bapunagar to inquire about the same, and finally, on the same day, the child was admitted there.

He further told that the next day, that is, on May 30, when he came home from work around 3 am, he saw that his son was home and resting. In the morning, when he asked his son why he had returned home, the son narrated the inhuman incident that had happened to him. The son said that on the 29th when the family left him at the madarsa, everything went well till the evening. But around 10 pm, the chief cleric of Madani Madrassa and another cleric approached him. The chief cleric, for no reason, hit him severely with a wooden stick on the back of his right ankle seven times and the other cleric held his left hand and gave him an injection on the side of the shoulder. The boy fell unconscious 5 minutes after the injection.

The child further told his father that when he regained consciousness after 30-35 minutes, he was having severe pain in the anus. So he was scared and escaped from the madarsa. While escaping, 3 people from the madrasa followed the boy to catch him. To avoid them, he hid in a hotel near Rajendra Park. After hiding there for a while, he took a lift on a bike leaving from the hotel and reached his house.

The victim’s father subsequently lodged a complaint with the Bapunagar police. In his complaint, he said that the chief maulvi (cleric) and another maulvi had unnatural sex with his son. He further stated that his son was hit with a wooden rod and some substance was injected in his shoulder to make him unconscious. He also said that though his son doesn’t know the name of the other cleric, he would be able to identify the accused.

Several cases of minors being sexually exploited in Madrasas has been reported frequently. In February this year, Kerala madrasa Muslim cleric Mohammad Swalih was arrested and charged under POCSO for sexually abusing minor girl students. A cleric and seven others raping two minors and blackmailing their families after recording the act was reported from Gurugram. Madrasas appear to have been turned into dens of sexual exploitation by the Muslim clerics.

(Featured Image Source: OpIndia)