Mumbai: School coach gets five year jail for sexually assaulting minor students

A special POCSO court in Mumbai sentenced a municipal school sports coach to five years of rigorous imprisonment for sexually assaulting minor girls during training sessions and when they had gone on a trip.

Special Judge S C Jadhav held the lagori coach guilty under section 10 (aggravated sexual assault) of the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act, and relevant provisions of the Indian Penal Code for molestation.

Besides sentencing him to five years of rigorous imprisonment, the court also imposed a fine of Rs 10,000 on the convict. Lagori is a traditional sport that is primarily played with two teams and a tower of flat stones or wooden blocks.

As per the prosecution, the informant (one of the targeted girls) was a student of Std IX of a Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) school where the man had been appointed as a lagori coach for students between Std VII and Std IX. The coach had selected 15 girls from the BMC school to play lagori. He also used to call the girls for practice from 9 am to 12.30 pm on Sundays at Mumbai's Lalbaug area.

The informant never attended the practice on Sunday as her parents did not allow her to take part in the sessions. The coach also used to tell the girls that he would teach them sports like wrestling and kabaddi. In July 2016, while teaching wrestling, the coach touched one of the girls inappropriately, the court was told. Later that year, the coach with 14 students from the school and two girls from his club went to Alibaug near Mumbai for a lagori tournament.

In one of the incidents, when the girls were playing in a water pool, when the coach asked them to come out. Despite the girls being in their wet clothes, he told them to stand. He talked with girls while staring at them and making them feel awkward, the informant said. Once it was raining while they were going to board a bus and the coach took the informant and another girl under his umbrella and put his hand on the shoulder of the informant and started rubbing it.