Ahmedabad

One Ashok Makwana, a building contractor from Gandhinagar has been arrested by the Sardarnagar police in Amhmedabad in the case of alleged molestation of a 13-year-old girl aboard an Indigo airline Goa-Ahmedabad flight on May 28. Police said that Ashok G Makwana was sitting next to the girl on the flight.

On Sunday, the parents of the girl filed a complaint alleging that their daughter had been molested by a co-passenger. Police had registered an FIR and had laun ched an investigation under the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act. The girl was seated in row 2 of the flight. Earlier in the day, IndiGo provided police with the list of passengers on the flight.

The Goa flight on which the girl was travelling had taken off around 1.15 am on Sunday and reached Ahmedabad at around 2.50 am.

According to the complaint of the girl, a male passenger sitting next to her had indecently touched her during the flight. The girl had also complained that the male passenger had asked for her mobile number by using various gestures. After arriving in Ahmedabad aboard flight 6E-948, the girl went home along with her father who had come to pick her up. The complaint was filed the next morning after she told about the incident to her parents.

Makwana is vice president of Gandhinagar town BJP unit. He had went to Goa with BJP city unit general secretary Ruchir Bhatt and other friends. Makwana maintains that his hand might have touched the girl while in sleep in that early morning flight. Ruchir too denies possibility of any indecent act on Makwana’s part. Ruchir said the seat originally belonged to him but he vacated it for Ashok before the girl came to the seat.