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Minor porn addicts kill 6-year-old girl in Assam

The police in central Assam’s Nagaon district arrested two minor “porn addicts” who stoned a six-year-old girl to death for resisting sexual abuse. An eight-year-old boy was also arrested for abetting the crime, along with the parents of one of the two boys — both 11 — for trying to suppress the incident and tamper with evidence.

The girl was killed on October 18 at a village under the Uluoni police station. Found lying unconscious inside the toilet of a stone-crushing mill, she was declared dead on arrival at a local hospital.

Sub Divisional Police Officer Mrinmoy Das said the victim was a next-door neighbour of the three accused, who are related. “The two 11-year-olds were porn addicts, seemed mature beyond their age and capable of execution of a gruesome crime. One of the minors, who studies at an English medium school, wanted to have a physical relationship with the victim but she resisted,” he said.

“He attacked her with a stone after she said she would tell her parents about his misbehaviour. The other 11-year-old boy also hit her with a stone and she died,” Das said, adding that the eight-year-old helped the other two dispose of the body.

The parents of the first 11-year-old were arrested for trying to hush up the crime and tamper with evidence, the police officer said. “The boy was using his father’s smartphone. We found pornographic materials in the phone’s browsing history. He used the phone for his online classes but got addicted to watching porn and would show the X-rated contents to the other two, his cousins,” Das said.

The boys were sent to a juvenile home on Thursday while the arrested parents are likely to be remanded to judicial custody, the police said. Nagaon SP Anand Mishra said the incident underlined the need for family or social intervention and institutional guidance to children exposed to the ills of pornographic or violent content available online.

Jayanta Das, a Guwahati-based psychiatrist, blamed the incident on “abuse and overuse” of technology and lack of parental guidance, with modern-day parents tending to let even infants be entertained with mobile phones instead of telling them stories or spending quality time with them.

“The pandemic, too, has created a situation where the parents are compelled to hand the mobile phone over to their children for online classes,” he told The Hindu. He advised parents and adults to use mobile phones responsibly as children tend to imitate their actions.

“Access to porn has become very easy. This has hugely affected our children. The roles of parents and teachers have become very important,” the psychiatrist said.