AHMEDABAD: City police on Monday arrested a 21-year-old man from Krishnanagar, for allegedly
stalking a 17-year-old girl from the Bodakdev area of the city, whom he first befriended on Facebook and later started pressuring to enter a relationship.
Inspector V M Desai of
Vastrapur police said the accused, Rutvik Gadhvi, was arrested in May 2019 for stalking and sexually harassing the same girl, a Class XII (commerce) student.
“The accused befriended the girl two years ago on social media and started chatting with her. He had taken her mobile phone number and started pursuing her to meet him and have a relationship with him,” said Desai.
Desai said Gadhvi started lurking around the girl’s school in Bodakdev and followed her whenever she went to school or tuition classes. The girl had in May 2019 told her parents about Gadhvi stalking her. They filed a police complaint after which he was apprehended by Vastrapur police.
After his arrest in last year’s case, he stopped stalking her for around a year.
From June this year, he resumed loitering around her house and following her whenever she went out. On Monday, he had grabbed her hand and threatened her with dire consequences if she did not enter a relationship with him. Traumatized, she called her parents who approached police and filed a complaint against Gadhvi.
Vastrapur police arrested the accused under charges of stalking and
sexual harassment and also booked him under the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act.
(The victim's identity has not been revealed to protect her privacy as per Supreme Court directives on cases related to sexual assault)