On Friday, two brutal cases of gang rape were reported from the Kochi district of Kerala. In the first case, a female model was gang raped on Thursday night in a moving car by three men. A woman was also involved in the incident. The Kerala Police on November 18 arrested three men and a woman, all hailing from Kodungalur.
According to the reports, the incident is said to have happened in Kochi on the night of November 17 when the victim woman had visited a bar near Cochin Shipyard. She happened to collapse that night as she was not feeling well. The accused who was also at the bar offered her help and said that they would drop her home safely. However, the accused gang raped her in a moving car while they were taking her to her apartment in Kakkanad.
The victim is undergoing treatment at Kalamassery Medical College. The matter came to light after it was reported to the police by a private hospital. The victim was admitted to the hospital by her roommate this morning. An FIR under sections 370 and 376 have been registered in connection with the case.
In the other dreadful incident, a minor girl who had run away from her home at Palappuram in Ottapalam was sexually exploited in Ernakulam, Kollam, Thrissur, and Wayanad districts of Kerala. The Police said that the victim girl aged 17 was drugged and was raped several times by several people.
The case came to the fore when the Police on Friday arrested eight persons including a woman in the case registered in connection with the assault of the 17-year-old girl. According to reports, there are a total of 21 persons accused in the case. While 14 of them are facing charges of sexually assaulting the victim, 7 others are charged with coercing the girl into the sex scandal.
The first case in the incident was registered at Palappuram police station at Ottapalam in Palakkad district. The case was a missing person complaint based on which the Police launched an investigation and discovered the awful sequence of events. The woman left her home on June 21 and on reaching the KSRTC bus stand in Ernakulam, the first accused named Donald Wilson befriended her. He took her to JJ Residency hotel at Vivekananda Road on the pretext of helping and then drugged and raped her.
He later called hotel owner Joshy Thomas and Manager Ajith Kumar to the room who also brutally raped the 17-year-old girl. The victim girl somehow managed to reach the KSRTC bus stand in Ernakulam again where a native of Pandalam named Manoj Soman approached her to help by offering her a job.
Manoj took the girl to a lodge on Chittoor Road, where he raped her. The lodge’s owner, K B Salam, also assaulted her. The victim was eventually given over to Girija of Udayamperoor, a lady with sex racket affiliations. Girija then transported her to other locations in Kerala, where she was assaulted multiple times. According to police, the serial rapes occurred between June 21 and August 4, this year.
The Police said that the woman was drugged with narcotic substances and psychotropic substances and was being pushed into a sex scandal. She was raped in several districts of Kerala including Ernakulam, Kollam, Thrissur, and Wayanad. 14 FIRs were registered by the Police in this case and the victim girl was shifted to Nirbhaya Home by the Child Welfare Committee after she was found near Lulu Mall in Kochi by the police.
The victim was given proper treatment at the care center for a month after which she revealed the abuses that happened to her to the Police. Eight persons who have been arrested in the case are Hotel owner Joshy Thomas (40) of Chakkamadom, Mattancherry; lodge owner K B Salam (49) of Karippayil House, Choornikkara in Aluva; hotel manager Ajith Kumar (24) of Kakkassery House, Krishnapuram, Thrissur; Manoj Soman (34) of Olakkavil, Koorambala at Pandalam in Pathanamthitta; Poonthura Chirayil Girija (52) of Makkalikadavu, Udayamperoor; Kanjirakkattil Achu (26) of Puthencruz; Nikhil Antony (37) of Ponnurunni, Vyttila and Bijin Mathew (22) of Kanakkary, Kottayam.
Reportedly, Donald Wilson, the first accused in the case has already been arrested by the Kerala Police in another similar case. He was arrested by the Police from Kollam district of the state.
