Kerala court clears guy accused of rape and murder of 5-year-old

A guy who was charged with the June 2021 rape and murder of a five-year-old child was found not guilty on Thursday by a special Pocso court in Kerala’s Idukki district.

The prosecution and the police suffered a setback with the special fast-track court in Kattappana’s ruling, which cleared the 21-year-old man in the case. At the time, the event had caused widespread indignation.

The prosecution claimed that the accused had repeatedly sexually assaulted the victim. When the victim’s family members were absent on June 30, 2021, the accused broke the law by breaking into her house and assaulting her sexually in the pooja room/bedroom. The prosecution said that the accused stole a shawl from an almirah and hung the kid from a cross-beam in the room after she passed out of concern that she would notify her parents.

Special Judge V Manju pointed out that the prosecution only depends on circumstantial evidence to establish the accused’s guilt in the absence of eyewitness testimony.

Therefore, in a case based only on circumstantial evidence, the prosecution must provide a coherent series of events that consistently demonstrate the accused’s guilt and that of no other party. Circumstantial evidence must be convincing and unable to support any other theory than the accused’s guilt in order to support a conviction. The court judgment said that the evidence must not only support the accused’s guilt but also contradict his innocence.

The prosecution in this instance failed to demonstrate all the facts which are compatible with the accused’s guilt and inconsistent with his innocence, the court said, “taking into account all the circumstances discussed above.”

The investigating officer did not check the almirah from which the ligature material or fingerprints were taken, the evidence was collected in an unsealed state, and the fingerprint expert did not find any chance prints. These are just a few of the flaws in the police investigation that the court listed.

The court emphasized that the slow pace of the investigation and the unscientific method of gathering evidence—which did not demonstrate the intelligence and cunning one could reasonably expect from an investigating officer—had a significant negative impact on the timely and efficient gathering of evidence in the case.

The victim’s family members sobbed on the courthouse grounds only minutes after the judge delivered her decision and demanded justice. “After 14 years of longing, we were finally blessed with a baby daughter. Her mother questioned, sobbing, “Where is the justice that she deserves?”

According to a police official, additional action would be taken after examining the parameters of an appeal against the court decision.