Kochi: A 28-year-old woman and her seven-month-pregnant friend were allegedly assaulted by the woman’s younger brother and his newlywed wife in Alangad near Aluva, in an attack that police say stemmed from an ongoing family property dispute and an alleged attempt to falsely implicate the woman in a theft case.

The Aluva West Police have registered a case against Joison (24) and his wife, Raina, under multiple provisions of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS) based on Joison’s sister Jomol and her friend Athira. Although the assault was captured on a mobile phone by Athira, the accused have not yet been arrested.

According to the complainant and her friends, the dispute centres around the partition of a family house at Nandikulangara in North Paravoor. The property – the house they were residing in – was sold and the money was divided among the victim, Jomol (28), her father Antony and her brother Joison.

Jomol’s close friend Rahul, who is Athira’s husband, alleged that Joison had taken the ₹1.5 lakh due to Jomol as her share of the property, claiming he needed the money for his wedding and promising to return it within three months

"He took the money from her family property share. Even at that time, he used to harass Jomol a lot. But he wanted to get married somehow, and to do that, he wanted the money and took it from Jomol," Rahul alleged.

Rahul further claimed that earlier Joison had pressured Jomol to hand over her 10 sovereigns of gold she had received from her ex-husband’s family following her divorce so that he could finance his wedding, which took place on July 5. “Since Jomol did not agree to this, knowing that she would lose the gold too, along with the already borrowed money, which allegedly led Joison to devise another plan to avoid repaying the money,” Rahul said.

According to Rahul, on July 7, two days after the wedding, Joison and Raina claimed that Raina’s two-and-a-half sovereign gold necklace had gone missing from her rented house in Alangad, where the duo lived with Jomol and her father, Antony. The couple allegedly accused Jomol of stealing it in the presence of neighbours and relatives.

Rahul alleged that the story fell apart when Jomol’s father insisted on approaching the police. “The necklace they claimed was original until then turned out to be rolled gold and later it was found lying right under their bed. Their plan was to frame it as if Jomol took the gold and thereby avoid paying this ₹1.5 lakh,” he claimed.

The alleged assault on Jomol occurred on July 9 after her father had travelled out of town to attend a funeral, leaving her alone at home. Joison and Raina had gone to her house.

Fearing further harassment, Jomol had asked her friend Athira, who is seven months pregnant, to accompany her to the Aluva West Police Station to lodge a complaint about the fake gold theft issue.

At around 12.24 pm, as the two women were preparing to leave, Joison and Raina returned and began assaulting Jomol.

“They came in, and for no reason at all, they started beating her. Without saying anything, they assaulted her brutally, and told me to get out. Raina beat me on my stomach. After that, she grabbed me, pushed me outside, locked the door and bolted it. She locked Jomol inside the room,” Athira recalled the incident.

Athira said she rushed to the nearby road to seek help and alert the police while the assault continued inside the house.

According to the FIR, Joison allegedly dragged Jomol by her hair, abused her using obscene language, choked her and repeatedly slammed her head against a concrete wall. Raina allegedly joined in the assault and struck Jomol three times on her back with a broomstick.

The accused also allegedly destroyed Jomol’s mobile phone, valued at around ₹40,000, by repeatedly smashing it on the floor. Athira alleged that the phone was deliberately destroyed because it contained recordings documenting earlier incidents of harassment.

Athira further alleged that Joison twisted her wrist while dragging her outside, leaving her with a suspected fracture, and that Raina punched her in the abdomen despite knowing she was pregnant.

“By the time Aluva West Police reached the house, Joison and Raina told the officers ‘Jomol is mentally unstable, that’s why we locked her up,’” Athira recalled. Police rescued Jomol from the room and later both women went to a nearby health centre. By that time Joison and Raina left.

Jomol said she sustained rib injuries, breathing difficulty and multiple other injuries in the assault. She was also kept under observation after her blood pressure reportedly spiked due to the attack. Meanwhile, Athira is undergoing medical monitoring after suffering abdominal trauma during the incident.

“My baby has not moved since the incident. I will be undergoing a scan today,” Athira told Onmanorama.

Speaking after the incident, Jomol alleged that the entire sequence of events was orchestrated to deny her rightful share of the family property. “To avoid giving me my ₹1.5 lakh, they cooked up all these tricks. My phone was smashed to pieces. It had all the recordings of the conversations between them. From the very beginning, they were torturing me, and the full recordings were in it,” she alleged.

Aluva West Police have registered a case and the accused have been booked under BNS sections 126(2) (wrongful restraint), 118(1 (voluntarily causing hurt by dangerous weapons or means), 296 (uttering obscene words) and 324(4) (mischief causing damage to property).

"We are investigating the case and no arrests have been made yet," police said.