Mumbai: At a time when crimes against women are rising alarmingly, a female teacher has been arrested on charges of sexually assaulting a 16-year-old male student multiple times over the last one year.
The 40-year-old teacher of a prominent Mumbai school woman, who is married with children, has been charged under provisions of Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act, Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Act and the BNS.
According to police, the accused woman is an English teacher who taught the boy when he was in Class XI.
The teacher told police she got attracted to the teenager during meetings which were held in school to set up a dance group for the annual school function in December 2023. She admitted to making sexual gestures to the student in January 2024.
The victim avoided her, but the teacher approached one of her female friends — who is not from the school — for help, a police officer said on condition of anonymity.
The teacher’s friend reportedly told the minor that relationships between older women and teenaged boys have become quite common.
Her friend, who has also been charged, managed to persuade the boy to meet the teacher.
The teacher picked up the boy in a vehicle, took him to a secluded place, “forcefully undressed him and sexually assaulted him.”
As the student felt anxious over the next few days, the woman gave him some anti-anxiety tablets, the cop said.
The vehicle has been seized for probe.
According to another police official, the teacher would get the student drunk and take him to five-star hotels in south Mumbai and near the airport, where she coerced him into sexual acts.
Noticing a change in the boy’s behaviour, his family asked him what was wrong. The family decided to keep the matter undercover as the boy was soon to have passed out from school.
However, after the student cleared Class XII Board exams and left school earlier this year, the teacher again contacted him.
“The teacher contacted the student through one of her domestic staff and asked him to meet her. The teen’s family then decided to approach us and register a case,” the officer said.
A case has been registered against the teacher under sections 4 (penetrative sexual assault), 6 (aggravated penetrative sexual assault) and 17 (abolition of offences) of POCSO Act, besides provisions of BNS and Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Act, 2015.
There has been no comment from the school on the matter yet.
