Four migrant workers were arrested on the charge of raping a minor girl from Uttar Pradesh and trying to abandon her at the Kozhikode railway station on Friday night.
It was officials of the Railway Protection Force (RPF) who first noticed the 16-year-old girl arguing with the four men, and they alerted the Kasaba police.
RPF sources said the four Uttar Pradesh natives — Ikarar Alam, 18, Ajaj, 25, Shakeel Shah, 42, and Irshad, 23, — who met the girl during a train journey to Kozhikodehad taken her to their camp near the Palayam bus stand after persuading her to get down at the Palakkad railway station on Thursday.
The girl, who was reportedly on her way to Chennai to meet her sister, was allegedly promised with a fake marriage offer and taken to Kozhikode by bus.
The Kasaba police who recorded the arrest of the suspects said the abused girl was reportedly missing from her home. A case had been registered at the Birno police station in Madhya Pradesh as part of efforts to track her, they said.
The girl was later shifted to the government observation home at Vellimadukunnu. The four who were charged under various Sections of the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act were remanded in judicial custody.
