Thiruvananthapuram: Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan on Thursday gave a meek response in the Assembly to charges of politically motivated cover-up and police negligence in the death of a five-year-old girl at Vandiperiyar in Idukki on June 30, 2021.
Inside the Assembly, the Chief Minister did not show any urgency to act against the investigating officer who was pulled up by the Court for a shoddy investigation. He merely said that a departmental probe was on. Opposition Leader V D Satheesan was livid. "The judgment came on December 14. Now it's one-and-a-half months and you have not even moved your pinkie," Satheesan said.
Pinarayi also chose to turn his back on the UDF charge that the police force was being employed to hush up the heinous deeds of party members.
Nonetheless, after the Assembly dispersed for the day, Law and Order ADGP M R Ajith Kumar issued an order suspending T D Sunil Kumar, the investigating officer in the Vandiperiyar case.
However, earlier in the day, the Chief Minister ignored calls for a re-investigation into the girl's death and reiterated his oft-repeated words of encouragement for his force. "Kerala has the best law and order in the country. Our police are adept at bringing culprits to book in sensational cases. Even cases that were left unsolved have been cracked by Kerala police," Pinarayi said.
The Opposition UDF staged a walkout in protest. Before storming out, the opposition detailed what it termed as the "sordid" and "shameless" investigation carried out by the police that eventually allowed the alleged culprit to walk free. It was Congress MLA Sunny Joseph who raised the issue through an adjournment motion in the Assembly.
Joseph said the 89-page verdict that exonerated the accused had numbered the grave flaws the police had made in the investigation to create the necessary conditions to bail out the culprit from the clutches of law.
"Ever since the girl was found hanging in the puja room of the workers' quarters, measures were taken to mislead the investigation," the Congress’s Peravoor MLA said. The first falsehood was that the child accidentally hung herself while playing, he said.
"The Station House Officer himself revealed that there was nothing mysterious about the death. Later some people's representatives were heard clamouring against a post-mortem," Joseph said. It was then alleged that CPI's Peerumedu MLA Vazhoor Soman had requested the police not to conduct an autopsy.
"However, the doctor who first examined the body demolished such claims. The doctor at the Health Centre, citing the wounds in her body including in her private parts, insisted on a post-mortem. It was after the post-mortem report came that the station house officer (SHO) acknowledged that it was murder and that sexual abuse was involved," Joseph said.
The prosecution case was that the accused - 22-year-old Arjun, a DYFI member - had abused the girl repeatedly at her house since early June 2021. It was stated that the accused broke into the house on June 30, 2019, at about 2:50 p.m. when the victim's brother had gone out for a haircut. The five-year-old girl was watching television and the case was that the accused forced himself on the child causing her to faint. In a fit of panic, and fearing that the girl would reveal his name, he took a shawl from the cupboard, tied one end to the child's neck and the other end to a hanging plastic rope and hoisted her up.
There were no eyewitnesses to the incident. But Sunny Joseph said the police had failed to collect the necessary circumstantial evidence.
The accused was close to the victim. He used to give her sweets. Even on the day of the murder he had given her sweets. "A shop owner had stated that the accused had bought Munch and Dairy Milk that day. But strangely the shop owner was not called as a witness and cross-examined," Joseph said.
The police had also arrived late to the death scene, which the court had also noted. The child was found dead on June 30, 2019. But the police arrived only the next day, on July 1. "Once at the scene, the most important thing was to collect material evidence. There was a bedsheet, a towel and a knife. But these were not collected on that day (July 1). These were collected only on July 3. The delay created the necessary conditions to destroy evidence. On top of this, the evidence collected was not even sealed or packed as mandated. And this evidence, in unsealed condition, was with the investigating officer till July 7," Joseph said. These failings were noted by the Court, too.
Even forensic evidence was not collected. The shawl used to hang the girl was taken from the cupboard. However, a fingerprint expert was not called as a witness.
The other big flaw related to the spot report. The investigation officer who arrived at the scene a day later said that both the door and window of the puja room were closed. This meant that there was no way the accused could have got in and carried out the murder.
Later, a person testified in court that a window was partially open on the day, hinting that the culprit could have escaped through the door. The court did not find this convincing as the prosecution had taken a different stand initially.
Sunny Joseph said that the accused was a DYFI member and a Red volunteer, and his father is a local committee member. "It is to save a party member that such a shoddy investigation was carried out," Joseph alleged.
The Chief Minister did not deny the political affiliation of the accused. But he said, “The politics of the accused or his father would not influence the government.”
