The Additional District and Sessions Court (POSCO) on Friday sentenced Hassankutty, the accused in the 2024 Pettah child abduction case, to a total of 65 years of rigorous imprisonment for aggravated penetrative sexual assault of an infant and for kidnapping with the intention to murder.

The 45-year-old Kutty, already identified as paedophile in the state's crime records, was charged under five counts, two under multiple sections of Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act (POCSO) for which he has to undergo rigorous imprisonment of 22 years each, and three under various sections of the Indian Penal Code for which he has to undergo rigorous imprisonment of 10 years for two and one year for one. Since the sentences will run concurrently, his jail term will not exceed 22 years. 

The incident happened on the night of February 18, 2024. The victim was the youngest of the four children of a honey-gathering gypsy couple from Telangana. They lived in an open tent erected on the roadside opposite Brahmos Aerospace Thiruvanathapuram Limited. At around 11 pm, when the father got up to relieve himself, he found his youngest, who, along with the other children, was sleeping between the parents under a tattered mosquito net, missing.

It was a coconut vendor nearby who arranged an auto and sent the distressed parents, who did not speak Malayalam, to the nearest (Pettah) police station. The next day, by around 7 pm, a civil police officer named Janosh inspected the wildly overgrown area behind the Brahmos compound wall and found the child abandoned in a ditch nearly six feet deep between the Brahmos compound wall and the railway line in between Kochu Veli and Thiruvananthapuram Central. She was unconscious and running a high fever. Later ,people in the area testified that they kept away from the highly thicketed area as it was full of poisonous snakes and wild dogs.

The child was immediately taken to the Thiruvananthapuram General Hospital. Dehydration had caused her creatinine level to shoot up alarmingly. Doctors said it was a miracle that she did not suffer renal failure. The child was urgently shifted to the SAT Hospital in Medical College, Thiruvananthapuram.

There were no external injuries on the victim. But the forensic analysis of the victim's vaginal and anal swabs detected blood, establishing that the child had been subjected to penetrative assault.

The scouring of CCTV images from the two cameras installed on top of gates 1 and 2 of Brahmos Aerospace led investigation officer (IO) Sreejith K to the accused.

The visuals showed a man in a dirty off-white dhoti, a green shirt and a cloth tied around his waist, and carrying a tender coconut, walking from gate 1 to gate 2, seemingly towards All Saints College. A thorough scan of the visuals showed no other person walking that stretch that night.

However, when the CCTV cameras in front of the college were inspected, the man was not to be found. He went off the radar between Brahmos and All Saints College, a less than 300-metre stretch. This led the IO to suspect that the man had turned and crossed the road to the open tent where the child was sleeping with her siblings and parents.

The IO forwarded the CCTV images of the man to the Crime Records Bureau, other police stations, and the WhatsApp groups of residential associations and other relevant local groups.

The Crime Records Bureau immediately found a match, a paedophile who was released from Kollam District Jail just a month ago, on January 12. Hassankutty, an Attingal native with aliases Abu and Kabeer, was convicted for the abuse of an 11-year-old minor girl in Ayiroor near Ranni.

The sharing of CCTV images on local social media groups, too, elicited a quick response. A man named Jayesh came forward saying he had given a lift to the 'man in the green shirt' from near the All Saints College area to Venpalavattom junction. He had arrived at the spot that late to drop a friend after a temple festival. 

Another coconut vendor near Brahmos testified that the man had come to his shop and fiercely haggled with him before buying a tender coconut; this was the coconut the man was seen carrying in the CCTV image. Yet another coconut vendor in the area saw him walk along the road.

The accused was also caught on the CCTV cameras in various parts of the city after February 18 midnight: KIMS Junction, Venpalavattom Bus Stand, Attukal, and Pazhavangady. Later, during the trial, the accused offered no explanation for his presence in these areas during odd hours.

After Hassankutty was arrested a fortnight later, on March 3, from Chinnakkada in Kollam, the circumstantial evidence assembled by the police got stronger.

The soil and plant particles collected from the ditch where the victim was found matched with the particle traces found in the belongings of Hassan Kutty. These belongings were seized from the outhouse of a hotel in Aluva, where Kutty worked as a 'parotta' maker.

More clinching was the forensic evidence of the victim's scalp hair on Kutty's green 'kaily', the coloured informal version of a white dhoti. It was this 'kaily' that was seen around his waist on CCTV images, the very cloth it was revealed during the investigation that he had used to cover the child's face and smother any sound that she could make while snatching her from the sleeping floor.

In this case, there was no direct evidence to prove the crime. The prosecution had relied on 25 circumstances to corner Hassankutty. "These circumstances conclusively establish his guilt beyond all reasonable doubt," additional session judge Shibu M P said in the judgment.