The admission by a Kerala court the other day of a review petition filed by the victim of the infamous Suryanelli serial sex scandal of 1996 and its order for issuance of notice to him are bound to worry Rajya Sabha Deputy Chairman PJ Kurien, say legal experts. In the review petition, the victim had sought naming of Kurien as one of the accused in the case.
There has never been adverse order or move from a court, the police or the Kerala Government against Kurien in the case since 2007 when the Supreme Court gave him discharge from the case. lawyers say that Wednesday’s order of the Sessions Court in Thodupuzha is equivalent to confirmation that there is ground for a case against Kurien prima facie.
The court also ordered that Kurien and the other four respondents — Dharmarajan, PK Jamal and Unnikrishnan Nair, first, third and sixth accused in the original case respectively, and the Kerala Government – should appear before it on May 29, the date for hearing the victim’s petition in detail.
“Kurien may not find it easy to escape the legal procedure this time as he has done so far. The fact that a private petition filed by the victim was turned down by a court earlier would have no impact on the new prosecution process sought by her. The court has now indirectly said that there is a prima facie case against Kurien,” said a leading lawyer of the Kerala High Court.
The victim approached the Thodupuzha court with the review petition after the First Class Magistrate Court at Peerumedu in Idukki district rejected her plea seeking legal action against Kurien on the basis of the disclosure by Dharmarajan, third accused in the case, that it was he who had taken the Kurien to her.
In her plea in the Thodupuzha court, the victim, now 33, had repeated the same request on the same ground. Dharmarajan, lone convict in the case who had jumped parole in 2005, had resurfaced last month to claim that he himself had taken Kurien to the rest house in Kumili where she was held in captivity. He also said that Kurien had spent half an hour with her.
The case pertains to the brutal rape of a 16-year-old girl from Suryanelli village in Idukki by 42 men in 41 days in 1996. A special court in Kottayam had in 2000 awarded imprisonment of varying terms to 36 accused but the Kerala High Court in 2005 acquitted 35 of them and commuted the life imprisonment awarded to Dharmarajan by the trial court for a five-year term.
However, on January 31 last, the Supreme Court annulled the 2005 verdict terming it as shocking and sent the case back to the High Court. A division bench, which is handling the case, granted bail to 31 accused though the Government asked it not to grant bail before the accused surrendered as the lower court order was relevant in the context of the apex court order.
The girl had not known Kurien during the time of her alleged rape by him but she first made her allegation against him on March 27, 1996 after identifying him from his photograph published in a newspaper the previous day. Since then she has stood firm in her allegation but Kurien was discharged from the case by the High Court and later by the Supreme Court.