KOCHI: But for the timely intervention of a senior police officer, the Walayar minor sisters’ sexual assault and death case would have been buried long ago as a case of just unnatural deaths.The local police team that probed the death of the 13-year-old elder sister whose body was found hanging inside the hut on January 13, 2017, ignored totally the postmortem report, which had clearly mentioned sexual abuse, and closed the case as an incident of unnatural death. However, the death of the nine-year-old younger girl on March 4, 2017, prompted the then Thrissur range Inspector General, M R Ajith Kumar, to intervene and order a detailed probe into both deaths.
“When I analysed the postmortem report of the elder sister, I noticed that it mentioned signs of sexual assault. The probe team didn’t give much importance to this report,” said Ajith Kumar.Around 9pm on March 4, 2017, Ajith Kumar received an SMS on his mobile phone from special branch DySP saying that the body of a nine-year-old girl was found hanging inside her house at Walayar and she was the younger sister of the 13-year-old girl whose body was found hanging in the same house on January 13, 2017.
“I sensed something was wrong and alerted the DySP concerned immediately to cordon off the area and call in experts for a detailed forensic examination of the house. The postmortem examination of the younger girl was conducted by a team of experts as per the police direction,” he said. The police carried out a fair probe into the death of the second child and collected all necessary evidence, he claimed.
Ajith Kumar, who found serious lapses in the police probe into the death of the elder sister, also initiated action against then Walayar Sub Inspector P C Chacko, then Kasaba Circle Inspector Vipin Das and then Alathur DySP V S Mohammed Kasim, who was at that time holding additional charge of Palakkad division. While Chacko was placed under suspension, an inquiry was ordered against Vipin Das and a memo issued against Mohammed Kasim seeking his explanation.