Kochi, Aug 25, 2020: The Kerala Police on August 25 arrested three men from Uttar Pradesh for sexually assaulting a 14-year-old girl in Kochi.
The gang rape was reported on August 23 at the Eloor police station in Ernakulam city.
On the same day in Uttar Pradesh, a 17-year-old girl’s mutilated body was found near a village in Lakhimpur Kheri district. She was also raped, the police confirmed.
The police had initially said the girl appeared to have been killed with a sharp weapon and that she had sustained injuries to her neck. The body was found near a dried-up pond, around 200 meters from her village, the cops added.
In Kerala, the first Information Report was registered based on the intimation of the doctor, who the minor and her grandmother had consulted.
Based on the complaint, the police arrested three migrant workers originally from Uttar Pradesh. The accused have been identified as Shahid (24), Farhad Khan (29) and Haneefa (28).
They were engaged in carpentry work and sundry jobs in the city and had been living in the Manjummel neighborhood. The victim was their neighbor and lives with her grandmother.
The girl, according to reports, revealed the details of the assault during a counseling session arranged by her school.
According to reports, the accused has sexually assaulted the girl several times. She was also threatened and forcefully taken to their residence. The Eloor police have identified six persons – all Uttar Pradesh natives – as the accused.
“The other three people had fled to their home towns during the lockdown. The incident first took place in March, when the lockdown was imposed,” an officer from the Eloor station told The News Minute.
The case has now been transferred to the Ernakulam Central Station, considering the seriousness of the accusation. Various sections of the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act 2012 (POCSO) and the Juvenile Justice Act (JJ Act) have been invoked.
The Kerala police have also sought the help of the Uttar Pradesh police to nab the remaining three accused in the case, who are believed to have fled to Uttar Pradesh earlier.
In Uttar Pradesh, the victim’s relatives said she had left home on August 24 to visit a neighboring town to fill up a scholarship form. However, when she did not return the family informed the police.
“I really don’t know what to say or whom to suspect. She left around 8.30 AM on Monday. We do not suspect anyone,” her uncle told the media.
This is the second rape and murder of a teenage girl from this district in the past 10 days.
On August 15, a 13-year-old girl was raped and killed. Her body was found in a sugarcane field that belongs to one of the accused. Two men from her village have been arrested.
Her father alleged his daughter had been strangled, and had her eyes gouged out and her tongue cut off.
The police said the post-mortem report, which was released a day later, did not show her eyes had been gouged or that her tongue was cut out. The police said the autopsy did mention rape and strangulation.
“Her eyes were not gouged and tongue was not cut. The claim is not true. There is nothing in the post-mortem report to suggest this. There were scratches near the eyes, likely due to the sharp sugarcane leaves where the body was found,” Satendra Kumar had said.
The girl had gone missing on the afternoon of August 14. The incident took place around 130 kilometres from Lucknow, in a village close to the Nepal border.
Sources: thequint.com/ndtv.com