23 years on, Hong Kong woman gets tutor arrested who molested her in her childhood
The 37-year-old victim who just 14 at the time-lodged a police complaint with Darjeeling Sardar police station against Jitesh Ojha, who gave her private tuition at her Darjeeling home, more than two decades ago. The woman, who is a Hong Kong based finance lawyer found out about cases last year during the #MeToo movement and spoke up now after she found out that Ojha, who has taught at 20 schools over two decades, was a serial molester who had, over the years, sexually molested students including a number of juniors from her school.
The police said it took the more than a year to substantiate the case with evidence and find out witness and fresh victims, especially in the midst of the pandemic, before they could nail him. The 46-year-old Ojha, who has a wife and a child, was arrested from his rented home in Siliguri on October 5, and is now in judicial custody till October 23. He has been booked under sections 354(outraging modesty), 506(criminal intimidation) and 509(word, gesture or act intended to insult modesty of a woman) of the IPC.
“The man, I learnt, continued to molest young students, especially those attending private tuition. I immediately recalled the way he used to inappropriately touch me while threatening me into staying silent, forcibly kissing me while maintaining a steely gaze. It took me 22 years to find the courage and conviction needed to report this horrific crime. But I wanted to raise my voice today in the hope that my courage would make it more acceptable in society for such issues to be discussed, and so that some other 14-year-old could protest against such sexual abuse and does not have to face the trauma I have been facing for the last 23 years,” She stated.
“We had absolutely no reason to disbelieve the woman,” said Rahul Pandey, deputy SP of Darjeeling. But when we first received the complaint from her in September 2019, we began to probe and found out that the man had an enviable academic record and was a respected teacher in community. We sought more details from the victim, and then she mailed us in about the kind of physical and sexual abuse she had been subjected to as a young girl. We then began speaking to a number of students and discovered more victims, who had faced similar trauma. We finally managed to gather enough evidence against the man to build a case and arrest him,” Pandey added.
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