Court’s duty to Walayar girls

Kerala has been on the boil ever since a special Pocso court in Palakkad on September 30 and October 25 acquitted four accused charged with the rape and abetment to suicide of two Dalit girls, aged nine and 13, at Walayar on the Kerala-Tamil Nadu border. A fifth accused, a child in conflict with the law, is being tried by the juvenile court. The older girl was found hanging from the rafters of the single-room tenement in which her family was living on January 13, 2017; and her younger sister was found in the same position on March 4.

The court, which agreed to the prosecution’s contention that the girls hanged themselves, however, did not agree with the reason that it had to do with their being sexually abused. The court dismissed the post-mortem report of the younger girl which stated there was “evidence suggestive of unnatural sexual offence on the child in the form of multiple episodes of anal penetrations in the past” as it is no conclusive proof. It also did not find it a big lapse on the part of the investigating officer who failed to follow up on the suggestion of the forensic surgeon to find out whether a girl of 129 centimetres can manage to fix a ligature on a rafter placed at a height of 246 centimetres.

The judgment, which went against the very spirit of the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (Pocso) Act, has shocked the people and many are on the streets demanding that justice be done. They stare at the twin tragedies: one, two young girls were sexually abused and found dead; and then two, no one is found guilty of it. This is unacceptable as it makes a mockery of the entire criminal justice administration in our country. People demand that the case be investigated further, the accused be brought to book and punished. The government and the courts must do whatever it takes to get justice delivered.