The Kerala Police have intensified the probe into the gangrape of a 19-year-old Dalit girl, a second-year BSc Nursing student, at Ayanthi near Varkala in Thiruvananthapuram district the other day. The incident has shocked the State as it has been reported close on the heels of the brutal rape murder of a 29-year-old Dalit law student in Perumbavoor near Kochi on April 28.
As per reports, the police have taken into custody three persons, suspected as culprits behind the atrocity against the teenage girl. Those detained reportedly included the young autorikshaw driver, said to be the boyfriend of the girl, who had raped her first in his vehicle but some police officials denied this. There are a total of five accused in the case, according to sources.
The girl undergoing treatment at a Thiruvananthapuram hospital has identified the three persons who had been taken into custody. The police said the girl was raped by her lover, the autorikshaw driver, and his friends. They had found the autorikshaw, in which the culprits had taken the girl and committed the heinous crime, from Ayanthi.
According to the police, the girl had gone out with her boyfriend at about 7.00 am Tuesday but she was taken to a deserted place where he and his friends allegedly raped her. The girl said in her complaint to the police that they had threatened her when she tried to resist the assault.
“It seems that she was first assaulted by the person who is said to be her boyfriend and then his friend. After that, she was abused by another person on the return trip,” said a police official. The girl was in a state of shock and suffered from fits when she was found by some people who rushed to the vehicle on hearing her cries for help.
At the same time, more shocking reports of atrocities against women and girls in the recent days flowed in from various parts of Kerala prompting women’s rights groups and social activists to step up their protests, which had started in relation to the Perumbavoor incident.
As per a complaint lodged with the Anchuthengu police in Thiruvananthapuram, a 68-year-old woman living alone in her house in the area was raped by an unidentified person on Monday night. The police have detained one person in connection with the incident.
According to the complaint from the elderly woman, who was now under treatment at a hospital, the accused had entered the house by breaking open the rear door after switching off the main electrical switch. The police were yet to confirm whether the culprit was the person they had detained.
In another incident, a 60-year-old retired Government employee has been taken into custody by the police in Kanhangad in the northern Kerala district of Kasaragod for sexually assaulting a seven-year-old girl, a Class Two student. It is said that he had assaulted the child two days ago after calling her into his house.
Meanwhile, the police on Wednesday detained a young autorikshaw driver at Ezhamkulam in Adoor in Pathanamthitta district for attempting to assault sexually a 13-year-old girl. The detained person, Manoj of Mylapra in Pathanamthitta, was a friend of the girl’s father.