Mumbai: A security guard in Mumbai's Goregaon was arrested for molesting a nine-year-old girl on a building’s terrace where he took her on the pretext of showing pigeons, the police said on Sunday. 

The girl, who used to come to the building to take private tuition, was befriended by the 51-year-old security guard over several weeks before executing his molestation plan, the police said.

The incident, which took place on March 7, came to light a week later when the girl suddenly refused to go to the building for taking her tuition class, police said.

On inquiry by her mother, the girl narrated the whole episode and expressed fears of a repeat of the incident, police said.

The girl’s mother came to know about the incident on March 12 and she immediately filed a police complaint, following which a medical test of the girl was conducted.

Goregaon police registered a case against the guard under the molestation and Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act and arrested him, said an official.

His arrest followed the scanning of the CCTV footage of the building and an identification parade, during which care was taken to avoid any direct contact between the victim and the accused, said an official.

Data shows that Mumbai Police register six cases of sexual abuse of children aged 4-16 daily. In 2023, the police in the country’s financial capital recorded 1,005 matters of molestation and abuse under the POCSO Act in the first 11 months of the calendar year.

The Goregaon incident has revived memories of last year’s incident in Thane, where a school’s contract employee sexually assaulted two minor girls.

Akshay Shinde, 24, was accused of sexually assaulting two minor girls at a school in Badlapur.

A contractual sweeper at the school in Badlapur, Shinde was arrested on August 17, five days after he allegedly sexually abused the two girls in the school toilet.

He was killed near the Mumbra bypass in Thane when he allegedly snatched the gun of a policeman while being taken in a police vehicle as part of a probe into a case registered against him on the complaint of his former wife. (IANS)