In a typical example of how cases of sexual abuse could get derailed by long delays in investigation and justice delivery, the victim of Kerala’s infamous Vithura serial rape scandal on Monday failed to identify her tormentors in the court when the case was taken up for trial nearly two decades after the incident.
All that the victim could do was to confirm from her memory to the Special Court in Kottayam that she was raped by many men at several places in Kerala and Tamil Nadu. The Vithura rape scandal, similar to the sensational Suryanelli serial rape scandal in many ways, had taken place in 1995 when the victim was just 16-year-old and the trial effectively started on Monday only.
She told special judge S Shajahan that she could not recall persons, places or other details as the brutality was inflicted on her 18 years back. legal experts said that the inability of the victim to identify the rapists and remember the details could land the case in uncertainty and even weaken it. Several men had abused the girl between October, 1995 and May, 1996.
Stating that she was unable to remember the rapists, she said it was one Suresh who took her to several places in Kerala and Tamil Nadu offering a job and presented her to several men. Prosecutor C Udayabhanu said he could not predict at this point how the case was going to be affected by the new development.
Trial proceedings are yet to be completed in 15 of the 23 cases registered in connection with the Vithura rape scandal. When the Special Court took up five of these 15 cases on Monday, only the accused in four of them had appeared. The court, which ended Monday’s proceedings in an hour after the victim’s statement, announced that the trial would resume on September 13.
As the victim expressed her inability to identify the accused of four cases, the judge pronounced her as having turned hostile in those cases. As all the accused in the fifth case had not appeared in the court for trial, this was not taken up on Monday.
The trail was to start on August 12 as per a decision the court took in May last in the context of the widespread demand for early delivery of justice to rape victims following the protests associated with the Delhi gang-rape. In May, 2007, the court had acquitted cine actor Jagathy Sreekumar, one of the accused in the Vithura rape scandal.
The court had on several occasions harshly criticised the victim for not appearing before it for the trial. At one point, the judge even accused her of making unreasonable excuses for delaying the commencement of the trial despite the fact that she was in no way responsible for the case not reaching its conclusion even after 18 long years.