69-year-old arrested for sexually assaulting minor girl

A 69-year-old man has been arrested for allegedly sexually assaulting a 10-year-old girl in southeast Delhi's Jaitpur.
The girl had been assaulted by the accused on earlier occasions as well but she did not share the incident with her family.
However, she gathered courage when the accused sodomised her again on July 3, and decided to inform her parents.
In her complaint, she told police that she had returned home from school in the afternoon of July 3. Her parents and sister were not at home when the incident took place.
While she was changing clothes, the accused entered her room and forced her on the bed and tried to sexually assault her. However, when the girl started crying and shouting due to the pain, the accused got scared.

He threatened her with dire consequences if she revealed the incident to anybody, the police said.

The girl was quite traumatised after the incident and after her mother returned from work that night, she narrated her ordeal to her, they added.
Her mother approached the police with a complaint yesterday. The accused was arrested the same day.
The accused and the victim's family were not known to each other.
He had been living on rent in a nearby shanty. Locals told police they had seen the accused often praying and singing devotional songs.
The girl's mother told police they had no clue that their daughter was being sexually assaulted.

Police are also probing whether the accused had targeted any other children in the area.