Angered after her four-year-old grandson splashed paint on her while she was playing Holi, a grandmother in Nagpur district’s Koradi area allegedly doused the child with boiling water, leaving her with severe burns, police said on Wednesday, PTI reported.
The incident took place on March 3 in Ward No. 2 in the Aramshin area and was caught on CCTV.
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Here’s what the police said
Police said four-year-old Om Harish Wange was playing with spray paint outside his house.
He accidentally splashed paint on his grandmother Sindha Thackeray, who was filling a bucket with water heated on Holi wood. “Enraged, she allegedly doused the boy with boiling water,” said a police official.
Suffering severe burns below the waist, Om was admitted to a private hospital in Nagpur, where doctors found that he had suffered about 45% burns.
The police have opened criminal proceedings against the woman.
Child cruelty in Maharashtra – Here’s what NCRB data shows
According to the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB), Maharashtra recorded an average of more than 61 crimes against children every day in 2023, more than 2.5 crimes per hour and almost one crime every 23 minutes.
Child rights organization Child Rights and You (CRY), which analyzed the NCRB data, said that crimes against children in the state increased from 20,762 cases in 2022 to 22,390 in 2023.
The analysis also found that girls continue to be targeted more often than boys.
In total, Maharashtra reported 8,639 cases under the Protection of Children from Sexual Offenses Act (POCSO) in 2023. Of these, 8,519 cases (98.16%) involved girls while 120 cases (1.39%) involved boys, indicating that girls constitute the vast majority of POCSO victims in the state, as reported by the NCRB.
