A 15-year-old orphan girl who was gang-raped by men pretending to be her relatives has been rescued by Child Line, a lawyer, and police, according to officials in Lucknow.

The girl was rescued on Thursday, March 14. Six people, including two women, were arrested on accusations of 376D (gang rape), 377 (unnatural sex), and sections 5 and 6 of the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act of 2012.

Three people have been arrested in the case, as per an IANS report.

In the FIR, the complainant's lawyer, Saif Mirza, stated that the girl called him and asked for assistance.

Mirza stated that the girl was in an orphanage in Lucknow's Thakurganj region. When she was six, a distant relative got her out of the orphanage, and ever since then, men in her family, including the 70-year-old prime accused, whom she referred to as father, had sexually abused her.

“Their heinous act made the girl sick. She was forced to pop pills of different kinds. When she complained about it to the two women in the house, they beat her up and starved her, locking her in a dingy room. They threatened to kill her if she opened her mouth before anyone,” the complainant said.

He said the girl also filmed the act of the miscreants on a mobile phone. “When the kin were confronted, they did not have any papers to show. They did not even have the girl’s Aadhaar card,” said Rukiya, a lawyer associated with the case.

Manisha Singh, Additional Deputy Commissioner of Police, Central Zone, said that an investigation was underway in the case.

Meanwhile, Vikas Singh, the district probation officer for the child welfare department, stated that the orphanage was closed in 2021 under his supervision. "There were only four to five minors who were returned to their parents," Singh said, adding that children with parents cannot be detained in an orphanage which was closed owing to a lack of legitimate reasons for retaining them.