The Kerala Police on Tuesday took into custody a person, suspected to be the culprit behind the brutal rape and murder of a 29-year-old Dalit woman, a law student, even as thousands joined the protests held in several centres in the State demanding justice for the victim and an end to such incidents. The law student was raped and murdered on April 28 inside her house near Perumbavoor in central Kerala.
The person, a neighbor of the victim who was missing from the area since the day she was murdered, was reportedly held from a restaurant in Kannur in northern Kerala and was being taken to Perumbavoor. It is said that he was accused in several criminal cases. The police had earlier said that there was only one accused in the case.
However, Additional Director General of Police K Padmakumar said that it could not be confirmed as yet whether the person held from Kannur was the real culprit. “We have received several pieces of information. Examination of the information is continuing,” he said.
The police had prepared a sketch of the suspected accused on the basis of the statements received from the victim’s neighbours. The sketch was expected to be released on Wednesday. The police had also taken into custody two persons who were acquaintances of the victim.
According to IGP Mahipal Yadav, who was heading the special probe team looking into the incident, there was only one accused in the case. “As per our information and investigation, the accused is only one person. Some people (in the neighborhood) had seen one person coming out of the house (of the victim),” Yadav told mediapersons.
The body of the law student belonging to a poor Dalit family was found by her mother when she came back from work around 8.00 pm on April 28 in their single-room house at Iringole near Perumbavoor, about 45 km from Kochi. According to the post-mortem report, she had been subjected to brutal rape and physical assault.
like in the Nirbhaya incident of Delhi, a sharp weapon had been used for assaulting the woman as her intestines had come out, as per the autopsy report. Both sides of the chest had been pierced using some sharp weapon. Her genitals had reportedly been struck with some weapon like an iron rod and her internal organs had been severely damaged.
Among those questioned on Tuesday was the former husband of the victim’s elder sister. It is said that the victim had always been afraid of him, who had already been separated from her sister.
She had complained to her mother about him on several occasions, relatives said.
It has now become clear that the victim and her mother had faced serious threats in the recent past from some people in the locality and had even lodged a complaint with the police who had refused to look into it. “Three months back, some of these people had tried to kill the girl’s mother by hitting her with a motorbike,” said a relative.
Describing the incident as shocking, Chief Minister Oommen Chandy promised to ensure that the culprit(s) got the severest punishment. The Kerala State Commission for Scheduled Castes and Tribes has suo moto registered a case into the incident even as the State Human Rights Commission also took suo moto cognisance of the case.
Meanwhile, protests raged across the State against the inability of the police to nab the criminal(s). Thousands including students, social activists, woman journalists and ordinary people joined the protests in Thiruvananthapuram, Kochi, Kozhikode and other places demanding justice for the victim and an end to such atrocities against women.
“The worst imaginable punishment should be given to the culprit. The punishment should be so intense that nobody should dare to commit such acts,” said Sumathi, mother of Soumya, the 23-year-old girl who was brutally raped and murdered by a Tamil Nadu native, Govindachamy, after pushing her out of a running train in February, 2011.
Home Minister Ramesh Chennithala of the Congress faced the wrath of the protestors when he reached the Taluk Hospital in Perumbavoor on Tuesday afternoon to visit the victim’s mother. He said later that the efforts to politicize such an incident in the context of the Assembly election were extremely unfortunate. “That is what we saw there,” he said.