The Ernakulam Principal Sessions Court in Kochi will pronounce on Thursday the quantum of worker Muhammad Ameerul Islam (24) whom it had the other day found guilty in the case pertaining to the brutal rape and murder of 29-year-old Dalit woman Jisha, a law student, at Perumbavoor in Ernakulam district early last year. Ameerul was the only accused in the sensational case.
Amidst arguments on Wednesday by both the Prosecution and Ameerul’s lawyer BA Aloor on the punishment to be awarded, judge N Anil Kumar rejected the Assamese youth’s petition seeking follow-up probe by a Central agency into the rape and murder of Jisha. The court reminded his lawyer the subject under consideration was quantum of punishment.
Before starting arguments, Ameerul told the court with the help of an interpreter that he was innocent, he never knew Jisha as the Prosecution claimed and that he did not know who the actual culprits were. The court told him that he had already been found guilty of raping and murdering the Dalit woman.
“I have not committed murder,” Ameerul told newsmen outside the court as he was brought there on Wednesday morning. The court had on Tuesday termed the crime as an act of extreme brutality and found Ameerul guilty of murder, rape, causing death or causing the victim to be in vegetative state through rape, house trespass to commit offence and wrongful confinement.
Ameerul’s lawyer requested the court to give life imprisonment, the least punishment awardable for murder, and not death considering his young age. The convict also told the court that he wanted to meet his parents. Pointing out that there were no eyewitnesses for the crime, Aloor prayed to the court not to pronounce the sentence on the basis of rumours.
Demanding the maximum punishment – death sentence – for the convict, the Prosecution argued that the Jisha rape-murder case was similar to the Nirbhaya case of Delhi in terms of the brutality involved and the age of the culprit. Ameerul had no repentance over the crime he committed ands such a person could not be allowed back into the society, the Prosecution said.
The Prosecution said the court should bear in mind while pronouncing the quantum of punishment that Ameerul had committed the crime in unimaginably heinous manner by inflicting 33 deep wounds to the victim and pouring liquor into her mouth when she prayed for water in her last moments.
The Dalit woman’s naked body was found in a pool of blood in her house at Vattolippadi, Iringole near Perumbavoor by her mother Rajeswari on the night of April 28, 2016. It was found that her genital parts had been mutilated using some sharp weapon and intestines had come out. Autopsy revealed that there were 33 wounds on the body.
The Prosecution case was that Ameerul, a daily-wage construction worker who used to go to work by the road alongside Jisha’s house, entered the house in a drunken and lustful state with the intention of raping her and stabbed her in the neck and face when she resisted his attempt. He raped her after that and mutilated her genitals using the knife.
Officials of a special probe team of the Kerala Police, headed by Additional DGP B Sandhya, took Ameerul, who had gone to Assam after committing the murder, from Kancheepuram in Tamil Nadu on June 14, 2016. There were suspicions that the crime could not have been committed by a single person but the police’s conclusion was that Ameerul was the only culprit.