Kasaragod: In another setback to Sruthi Chandrasekharan, accused of running a one-woman sextortion racket by posing as an ISRO employee, a fast-track special court dropped POCSO charges against her husband's elderly relative, whom she accused of committing aggravated sexual assault against her minor son.
The special court in Hosdurg, while framing charges in the case on Monday, July 15, dropped Sections 9 (m) and 10 of the Protection of Children against Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act against the 65-year-old accused, said his lawyer K Shreekanth.
The sections deal with aggravated sexual assault against a child under 12 years old and attract imprisonment between five and seven years.
On July 11, the Kasaragod sessions court rejected Sruthi Chandrasekharan's anticipated bail petition in a case of cheating a man of Rs 1 lakh and threatening him with rape when he asked her to return the money. The anticipatory bail was rejected when the sessions judge found that she had filed a rape against another man, a gym trainer, in Mangaluru impersonating an assistant technician with Isro in Thiruvananthapuram.
She had pressed a rape complaint against a civil police officer in Thrissur after befriending him allegedly as an Income Tax sub-inspector and taking lakhs of rupees from him.
In September 2023, Kasaragod's Bedakam Police registered an FIR against Sruthi's husband's relative accusing him of committing aggravated sexual assault on her minor son, who was under 12 years old. Adv Shreekanth said the complaint was filed on his mother's insistence after he objected to her way of life.
Apart from the sections under the POCSO Act, Bedakam Police charged the elderly man with house trespass (Section 451 of IPC), voluntarily causing hurt (Section 323 of IPC), and wrongful confinement (Section 342 of IPC).
The police retained those charges after investigation and submitted the charge sheet to the fast-track special court.
"I moved a pre-trial petition urging the court to drop the POCSO charges based on the statements of the witnesses produced by the prosecution. The court admitted my petition today," Adv Shreekanth told Onmanorama on Monday.
Now, the accused will face charges only under the IPC and the case will be moved to the Kasaragod sessions court, he said. "And Sruthi's son will be a witness in the case, not a victim," he said.
