Lone accused acquitted of rape and murder of 6-year-old in Idukki

Idukki: In a surprising development, a man accused of raping and murdering a 6-year-old girl here was acquitted by a court on Thursday.
The Special Fast Track Court in Kattappana observed that the police did not have sufficient evidence to incriminate the accused Arjun in the case. The judge read out a single line that the “prosecution failed to prove the case and the accused has been acquitted” while pronouncing the judgment.
Meanwhile, the police said they would be appealing against the verdict of the court.

The case
According to the case, the accused allegedly sexually assaulted and murdered a six-year-old girl at Vandiperiyar in Kattappana in 2021. She was found hanging in a room at the estate layam (settlement huts of estate workers).

 The incident was first considered as a suicide by cops, however, the accused Arjun, 22, a local DYFI worker, was later arraigned in the case with charges of rape, murder and sections of the POCSO Act.

The prosecution claimed that the accused had been sexually exploiting the girl since she was three years old by luring her with chocolates. The girl was abused by the accused, who was close to her family, while both her parents went out for work.  

Did not get justice: Victim's mother
The girl's relatives alleged that several lakhs of rupees were spent to get acquittal for the case. “My daughter was born 12 years after marriage. Everyone knows that the accused has committed the heinous crime. However, we did not get justice from the court,” the victim's mother said. 

Relatives of the victim waylaid the jeep carrying Arjun while he was taken back from the court by the cops and some of them banged the window of the police jeep. The cops managed to take the jeep out of the court premises with great difficulty. "We will not go for appeal and will seek justice in our ways," the relatives said.

Cooked up case: Defence
Meanwhile, the lawyer of the accused S K Adithyan said that it was a case cooked up by the Vandiperiyar SHO without a shred of evidence and that was the reason for acquittal.

“The SHO has to answer several questions now for falsely implicating a youth who is from a socially and economically backward class by planting evidence and witnesses. I have urged the court to conduct a reinvestigation to find the actual accused and will seek compensation for the accused who has now been acquitted,” he added.

“Whether there is scope for appeal will be looked into after getting the copy of the judgement. We had produced all possible evidence including scientific ones,” investigating officer T D Sunilkumar said.  

The special prosecutor of the case is expected to make a statement after getting a copy of the judgment. 

The High Court had sought an explanation regarding the serious failure of the police in preparing the charge-sheet in the case of the six-year-old girl being tortured and then strangled to death. The High Court found that the police did not charge the accused under the Scheduled Castes - Scheduled Tribes Prevention of Harassment Act and sought an explanation from the government regarding the failure of the police's investigation.

The omission of some clauses in the charge-sheet which are added to get the maximum punishment for the accused led to suspicion.

The police ignored the request of the girl's family to add Section 325 of the SC-ST Prevention of Atrocities Act, which was supposed to be imposed if a Scheduled Caste girl was raped. With this, the girl's family has lost the financial assistance they were supposed to receive from the government.

The police had submitted the charge-sheet in the case within 78 days. Around 48 witnesses were examined in the case. The trial of the case began at the Kattappana fast-track court in May 2022.