Kannur: The Suryanelli case, in which a 16-year-old schoolgirl was raped by 37 persons in 40 days at various locations, shocked Kerala's conscience in 1996. Twenty-two years later, another 16-year-old Kannur girl's horror tale with an eerie resemblance to the Suryanelli incident has sent shock waves across the state last week.
Soumya (name changed), a class X student, is now in the Nirbhaya shelter home as her mother and brother have disowned her after the lurid details of the case emerged and her father was arrested on charges of raping her for years.
According to police sources, she was gang-raped on a few occasions and the exact number of her abusers is still a mystery.
“I don't have anything, I am a big zero, nobody can help me,” wrote Soumya to her boyfriend, who had been trying to win her over through chats, voice messages and video calls. Soumya had been repeatedly saying about her inability to come up in life, the love lost or never gained, a child who suffered severe emotional insecurity. Her messages to friends, girls as well as boys, had a common theme – seeking love and attention.
All started with father
The emotionally disturbed Soumya was abused by her own father at the age of eight. When her mother Elsa (name changed) saw him touching her private parts, she told the girl not to let him touch her. However, the girl was not emotionally close to her mother and felt she cared only for her elder brother Sam (name changed). Her father Sajan (name changed) always supported her when Elsa made her to do some household works or scolded her for low grades in school.
Soumya was a favourite of her father, a girl born to him when he was 40. Mother later did not find anything unusual when he pampered the girl, who was the youngest. The family banked on his income from polishing work and they moved from one rented house to the other, trying to make both ends meet. Elsa did odd jobs in nearby houses but the income was not sufficient and in the daily struggle she also could not attend to the girl properly. Soon, she became close to the boys in the neighbourhood.
Friends trap her
Till class eight, Soumya studied in a school at Kalyasseri before shifting to a high school in Kannur town. “She got acquainted with boys from rich families in the town and maybe as a child of her age, her curiosity in fashion and other luxury also might have increased. She had a close friend, Maya (name changed), who introduced her to some seniors. Maya was also abused. Occasionally, some youths visited her at her rented house, a quarters, at Pappinisseri. Her father Sajan was also aware of her links with boys but he couldn't say anything as he already was preying on her,” said Venugopal KV, Taliparamba DySP, who is investigating the series of rape on Soumya.
“In the last two years, she had been using two SIM cards (at least) and changed four phones. The father must have been aware of it. It is strange that none of the family members noticed that the 14-year-old girl was using and changing smartphones frequently. Obviously, the father was aware of the boys visiting her and dropping at the malls, sometimes skipping the school also. But on what grounds would he object to the friendships as he himself had been sexually abusing her,” the DySP remarked.
The abuse came to light after she was gang-raped in a lodge in Parassinikkadavu, presumably the first gang-rape on her. “More than 19 accused could be listed in a span of two months. The list could be even longer. We found conversations of one councillor and some men from the Gulf in the girl's phone. However, the girl has not given any statements against them, so we are waiting,” added the investigation officer.
After the Child Welfare Committee was informed, Soumya was taken to the children's home for girls and from there she was shifted to the Nirbhaya shelter home.
Mother blames girl, wants father let off
Police tracked nearly 19 men, including her father who abused her sexually for long. When her brother Sam found a job in Chennai and mother went out for work, Soumya was alone at home with Sajan after school hours. The girl mistook the approach of her father as paternal care, and for her the advances from the men were also nothing unusual, says a woman police officer at Taliparamba.
“Everything started with the father. When the girl came here with her mother and brother, she was looking terrified. She could not speak anything. The initial curiosity with her boyfriends had been lost, the gang-rape must have been a horrifying experience for the little girl. The mother was blaming everything on the girl and requested not to arrest the father. She begged that they cannot live without his income and that she cannot take the girl every time for trials as there were 19 accused and the trial procedures could be longer,” the woman officer said.
“The crime in this case, started from the family itself. Father started the abuse when she was a small child and the sexual abuse started as soon as she reached puberty. There was no fruitful communication between the girl and her mother and she took it as a normal way of life. What was significant in this case was the impact of social media. Almost all the accused are from Kannur and many of them were known to each other but they all got connected to her through Facebook and continued chatting on Messenger and WhatsApp. The network was widened with the social media connect,” said the DySP.
Troubled Soumya flees house
Soumya had previously left the house on two different occasions with two other youngsters – Shyam and Akhil (names changed). She was spotted by the police at Kasaragod with Shyam when she was in class 8 and another time she had left with another boy Akhil from Valappad, Thrissur. When the latter's parents denied her entry to the house, both of them protested and Akhil's family informed the police there. The second incident took place when she was in class 10. Taliparamba cops are probing all the possible links with the girl to check if more people have abused the minor. Due to the earlier cases and complaints, Soumya had to drop the schooling last year.
At Kalyassery school also, she was reportedly abused by a man in the neighbourhood, who claimed to be a leader of a student outfit. However, the police could not locate him yet.
Facebook trap
The recent series of abuses started when one Mridul approached her with a friend request from a Facebook ID, Anjana. The user of the ID convinced Soumya that she loved and cared for her a lot. She also suggested that she has got a brother named Mridul and he would be a good match for Soumya. Soumya, in the course of time, developed a strong association with 'Anjana', which was Mridul himself and she inquired with her on every matter from cosmetics to boys.
The police are yet to find out when did Soumya realise that Anjana and Mridul were one and the same and why she succumbed to his demands. Mridul introduced her to Sandeep (name changed), who hooked her up to Shamsuddeen, Ayoob and Shabeer.
On November 5, Sandeep had taken Soumya to his house and abused her. After that, the contact continued and police say he contacted other people and took money from them for taking the girl to their places.
Soumya had given statement to the women CI in Kannur on December 3 that she was invited by Anjana to meet in a car at Puthiya Theru and later taken to Parassinikkadavu in Sandeep's car along with Mridul. Since the lodge where she was gang-raped on November 19 was in Parassinikkadavu, the woman CI transferred the complaint to Taliparamba DySP. In the preliminary examination, the DySP found that 'Anjana' does not exist and Soumya did not travel to Parassinikkadavu on November 13 as she claimed.
“The tower locations of their phones showed that Soumya and Sandeep were at Mattool on November 13, and she never travelled to Parasinikkadavu on that day. Initially, she feared that if she admitted to having prior acquaintance with the accused, she might also get punished. I convinced her that since she is a minor, the crime stands even if the accused was a friend. After that she opened up about the abuse in detail,” said Venugopal.
As planned by Mridul and Sandeep, Soumya was taken in Sandeep's car on November 19 and taken to a lodge at Parassinikkadavu. After dropping her in a room, Mridul left and Sandeep sexually abused her. Subsequently, three others – Shamsuddeen, Ayoob and Shabeer – abused her. Police said Sandeep took Rs 10,000 from the other three for bringing the girl to the lodge. After all of them assaulted her, Sandeep dropped her back at Capitol Mall in Kannur town.
When the girl returned home, it was late and her mother found her unusually gloomy. She admitted about the incidents as her brother and mother questioned her. Meanwhile, Sam claimed that he was threatened by the accused that they would leak some nude videos of the girl and tried to extort money.
The detailed statement of the victim was taken at the office of the DySP on December 4 in the presence of Soumya's mother Elsa, who claimed that she was not aware of the abuse by her husband. However, in the statement given to the doctor who examined her, the girl had admitted that her mother had warned her against revealing the advances by her father. Soumya later told the woman officer that the improper behaviour (not penetrative sex) from the father began when she was just eight years old and mother had asked her not to let him touch her body.
Wife may dump accused
Sandeep, who arranged for the gang-rape, had married only recently and his was a love marriage, said the DySP. “The marriage took place against the will of the girl's family though the houses of Sandeep and his wife are just a few metres away. His father-in-law's shop is by the road and Sandeep had crossed the shop when he brought Soumya home on November 5. His wife, who is studying MTech outside the state, is in a predicament. She cannot go back to her parents as they had disowned her after her marriage to Sandeep. Now, the only option left with her is to divorce him and leave,” the officer said.
Till Sandeep came to the picture, all the incidents of rape were involving single persons and police suspect that some of them might have visited Soumya's house and raped her. In some other cases, she was taken to their houses or the houses of their relatives. “The dimension of the case changed once Sandeep got involved it. He linked her to many other men and had been trying to mint money out of her,” he added.
In the Suryanelli rape case, a 16-year-old schoolgirl was raped by 37 persons in a span of 40 days in 1996. The main accused Dharmarajan was sentenced to life term in the case.
