Kasaragod: In 2005, at just 15, she was gang-raped. An orphan and left to fend for herself, the adivasi girl named her three attackers -- a wealthy plantation owner and his two drivers -- underwent a medical examination, and waited for justice. But when the trial finally began six years later, she had vanished. With her disappearance, the sexual assault case collapsed, leaving Kerala Police with a missing-person investigation that makes Kasaragod look like Kerala's badlands.

"It was the government's responsibility to protect her, considering she was an orphan, adivasi, and a gang-rape victim. But Kasaragod Police did not even know the girl was missing until the court tried to summon her during the trial," said Thekkan Sunilkumar, state general secretary of the Kerala State Patika Jana Samajam (KPJS), which works for Scheduled Tribe and Scheduled Caste communities.

In 2012, when Kanni A V (name changed) was 22, her brother filed a missing-person complaint at Ambalathara Police Station, reporting she had been missing for six months. Although the case is 13 years old, police maintain it was never shelved. The Kasaragod District Crime Branch is investigating the case.

Six months ago, Kannur Deputy Inspector General Yathish Chandra formed a 10-member Special Investigation Team to find the girl. "We review the case every month. The girl was last seen four to five years before she was reported missing," the officer said, placing her disappearance between 2007 and 2008. Asked if there is evidence she is dead or alive, he cited Section 108 of the Indian Evidence Act, 1872: after seven years, the law presumes death unless someone can prove otherwise. "We have no evidence that she is alive," he said.

This is the second case of an Adivasi girl going missing after being raped from the same era and area, said Sunilkumar. The two victims were from the Mavilan Scheduled Tribe community, and the two missing cases were registered at Ambalathara Police Station -- now facing the same grim outcome, he said.

In May this year, the State Crime Branch arrested civil contractor Biju Paulose (52) for the kidnapping and rape of a 17-year-old girl, Reshmi (name changed), his live-in partner.

She reportedly went missing on June 6, 2010 -- six days before her 18th birthday. Police could have arrested him then itself because Reshmi was a minor.

But Paulose was arrested 15 years later because of pressure from the High Court, which began monitoring the case after Reshmi's mother, Kalyani, filed a petition seeking a CBI inquiry, said Sunilkumar.

As part of the renewed investigation, the State Crime Branch’s Special Investigation Team came up with a theory in March 2025 that the skeletal remains of an unidentified woman, washed ashore at Thalangara estuary in Kasaragod town in September 2011, belonged to Reshmi. Her family, however, expressed doubts, pointing out that she had gone missing 15 months earlier.

Police suspected the remains were Reshmi’s after finding a silver-coloured anklet, which a friend said resembled one she used to wear. But scientific tests have yet to confirm the claim. Forensic analysis suggested the remains were of a woman aged 20 to 25. Reshmi did not turn 18 when she went missing.

The autopsy could not establish the cause of the death either, as the head and soft tissues were missing.

The Regional Forensic Science Laboratory in Kannur obtained DNA profiles from the blood samples of Reshmi’s parents and sister, but was unable to extract comparable DNA from the three bone samples sent by the police. Samples sent to the Rajiv Gandhi Centre for Biotechnology (RGCB), Thiruvananthapuram, for mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) testing also yielded no usable DNA, State Crime Branch DySP Balakrishnan Nair P told the High Court in a progress report in August. He added that the samples were then sent to the Central Forensic Science Laboratory (CFSL), Hyderabad, which lacked mtDNA profiling facilities, and that he was now considering sending them to CFSL in Chandigarh.

Police are pursuing mtDNA analysis because mitochondrial DNA, inherited only through the mother, is more resistant to degradation and can help confirm the girl's identity through her mother or sister.

Police suspect that Paulose killed Reshmi in their rented house at Madiyan near Kanhangad and transported her body 50 km east to the Pavithram Kayam river in Panathur, dumping it on the riverbed. They said the skeletal remains floated downstream to the Thalangara estuary 15 months later. Investigators collected hair-like material from the back of the jeep allegedly used to transport the body, but the Regional Forensic Science Laboratory (RFSL), Kannur, has yet to complete DNA comparison with Reshmi's parents' profiles.

This is perhaps why the State Crime Branch has not yet invoked murder charges against Paulose, who was released on bail on August 8, 2025, three months after his arrest.

"We want our daughter's case handed over to the CBI," Reshmi’s father M C Raman reiterated at a press conference in Kasaragod on Monday, September 22. He also alleged that more people were involved in her disappearance, including a businessman in Panathur.

The Crime Branch said each of the individuals named by Reshmi's parents were investigated but it could not find any evidence linking them to the girl or her disappearance.

A rape and burial of truth
In February 2005, while working as domestic help in the house of George and his wife Eliyamma at Odayamchal in Kodom-Bellur panchayat, Kanni's broken bangles caught Eliyamma’s eye. When asked, the girl revealed she had been sexually assaulted. The next day, George took her to the Rajapuram Police Station to lodge a complaint.

The then Sub-Inspector T P Ranjith, later to retire as a DySP, registered the case and immediately transferred it to the Special Mobile Squad (SMS), a Kerala Police unit tasked with probing offences under the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act. "It was a serious case. So it was transferred the same day to the SMS DySP," Ranjith recalled when contacted.

But the records show a troubling shift. In her initial statement to the Rajapuram Police, the girl named only one accused, Vinu. When the SMS DySP recorded her statement, she named two men -- Vinu and Vinod. Both were arrested but secured bail within 10 days. "It was very quick. The court will have its reasons," said an investigator.

A month later, her testimony under Section 164 of the CrPC added a third name: Vinu and Vinod's employer, Sebastian. "Those were pre-POCSO days. Then, we had to apply to a magistrate to record the survivor's statement. It often took a month or two for the magistrate to record the statement. Today, it must be done within 24 hours," said an officer.

A medical examination confirmed sexual assault. But crucially, no DNA samples were collected or preserved. "It was still early days in DNA fingerprinting," the officer said.

 In 1989, Kerala Police became the first in the country to use DNA fingerprinting in a paternity dispute, flying in Lalji Singh -- celebrated as the 'father of DNA fingerprinting in India' -- from Hyderabad to testify before a Thalassery court.

Yet, 16 years after that breakthrough, Kerala Police did not collect DNA samples from Kanni, who had reported the assault. "It only exposes the department's indifference towards crimes against Dalits and Adivasis," said Thekkan Sunilkumar.

In 2007, the SMS DySP in Kasaragod submitted the charge sheet, based primarily on Kanni’s statements. By 2011, when the trial finally began in the Kasaragod Sessions Court, the girl was nowhere to be found. "The police realised she was missing only when they tried to serve the court's summons. The family realised when the police told them," said an officer.

After repeated attempts to trace her failed, police asked Kanni's brother to file a missing-person complaint. She had continued working at George's house even after the assault, police said, before moving to her maternal uncle's home, from where she vanished. "Her parents were already dead by then. Her sister and brother were not in touch with her," the officer said.

After the case came to light, George and Eliyamma separated — he moved to Cherupuzha in the Kannur district, while she remained with their children. When the trial opened, Eliyamma turned hostile in the court, claiming she had noticed nothing unusual. George, who had taken Kanni to the police station to file the complaint, ignored repeated summons and never appeared in court, the officer said.

With the survivor missing and no witnesses left to testify, the court acquitted all three accused in 2012. Sebastian, the plantation owner named in her statement, later claimed George had framed him and his workers out of personal enmity.