THANE: Two four-year-old girls studying pre-primary at a prestigious co-ed school in Badlapur were allegedly sexually abused by a 23-year-old male cleaning staff in a girls’ toilet.

The assault took place on August 12 and 13, 2024, when the girls attending morning classes were going to the toilet. The school had not assigned a female attendant to the girls’ toilets. The accused, Akshay Shinde, was hired on a contractual basis on August 1, 2024, and used his job of cleaning the girls’ toilets to sexually exploit the minor girls.

The parents of the two girls filed a complaint on Friday evening, after which the police arrested the accused.

The sexual assaults came to light after one of the girls complained to her parents about pain in her private parts when she returned home from school. When questioned, she told them that the accused had touched her private parts when she went to the toilet. The shocked parents then contacted the parents of another girl in the same class who was close to their daughter. The girl’s parents said that their daughter was now afraid to go to school.

The parents then got the girls examined by a local doctor, who found that both of them had been sexually abused. The outraged parents then contacted some social activists of the area and rushed to Badlapur East police station to file a complaint. However, Senior Police Inspector Shubhada Shitole allegedly delayed the proceedings despite it being a POCSO case. The case was registered late on Friday evening.

Shitole was unavailable for comment, so HT contacted her superior, Deputy Commissioner of Police SH Varhade, who said, “We have filed a case in this matter under the POCSO Act and the BNS Act. After initial investigation into the matter, we have arrested the accused.”

During the police investigation, numerous failures and negligence on the part of the school administration came to light. In addition to the fact that there was no female supervisor in the girls’ toilets, it turned out that many of the school’s surveillance cameras were not working, some parents reported.