NINE-YEAR-OLD Deepika Ratan prefers the police station to her house. And now a policeman wants to adopt her.
In a strange tale of abuse, abandonment and timely intervention, Deepika’s father Harvilas (37), a laboratory assistant at Bharatiya Vidyapeeth, was arrested on Wednesday and charged with causing grievous hurt, wrongful confinement and abandonment of a child under 12 years.
The mother has also been booked under the same charges but, currently in their hometown of Ludhiana with her two other children, will only be arrested when she returns.
Apparently, for the last year, Harvilas and his wife have allegedly been physically abusing Deepika and feeding her stale food—punishment for being their second daughter.
‘‘My mother has burnt my hand with a pressure cooker. My father puts out his cigarette butts on my hand when he’s angry,’’ the little girl counted off the incidents on her little fingers, quite matter-of-factly.
That’s not all. When Deepika was 10 months old, her parents left her with her grandparents. They only took her back last year, when the grandparents said they couldn’t take care of her anymore.
‘‘Papa and Mummy used to come only once a year, to visit me for a day,’’ said Deepika, the giggle suddenly dying on her otherwise-cheerful lips.
Finally, on Friday, concerned neighbours called up the Kalamboli police, saying they believed the little girl had been locked in the bathroom of her Kharghar house in Navi Mumbai.
With wife Praveen (34) out of town, Harvilas said he lost his temper because Deepika wouldn’t eat her lunch and locked her up.
When the police arrived, Deepika was cringing in a corner, crying, and wouldn’t speak. ‘‘She was so scared, she didn’t say one word,’’ said Senior Police Inspector Shamsher Khan Pathan, the first policeman on the scene—and the man who now wants to adopt her.
Harvilas, however, told the police he loved his daughter and had never beaten her up. ‘‘She has problems with her mother and so the two fight quite often,’’ he said, later admitting, though, that he had stopped paying her school fees because she was ‘‘not interested’’ in studying.
Now, the police have taken custody of the child. ‘‘We are trying to get her into a good institution so she can have a healthy upbringing. We’re also trying to open a trust in her name,’’ said Navi Mumbai Commissioner of Police Vijay Kamble.
Meanwhile, Pathan has volunteered to adopt Deepika and plans to file a formal application with the court. The plea, though, will probably be rejected since Pathan is a Muslim and Deepika, a Hindu. Also, the girl is a minor and her parents’ consent would be necessary.
bayaagarwal@expressindia.com