A link in sordid sex abuse story: Poverty

CHENNAI: Kumaran Nagar is nothing more than a cluster of ramshackle houses by the polluted Cooum river that runs through Chennai. It is located within the middle- and uppermilddle class borough of Anna Nagar, where many people work as domestic helps or do odd-jobs. Others have small businesses, if they can be called that.

The 30-year-old woman who is one of the lead actors in a sordid saga playing out right now in the city was a flower seller. Most days, S Kanchana, who lives in the same area, would see her, and her daughter, a nine-yearold, selling flowers by the roadside.

Last weekend, Kanchana watched as the police descended on the area and arrested the mother, and then took the girl away to a children’s home. The mother’s crime -- allowing her daughter to be sexually abused in return for money, sometimes in her own home; and perhaps luring other girls, friends of her daughter. Kanchana says she still can’t believe it. “We hear of such crimes happening in far off places, but you would never imagine someone you’ve lived next to and known for decades would be capable of such things.”

Also arrested is the 30-yearold woman’s younger sister, 28, who allegedly allowed her daughter to be abused too. The abuser, A Perumal, 48, who runs a ration store in TP Chatram in the city has also been arrested; in all, he is accused of abusing seven minor girls. The police suspect there may be more. They believe the assaults took place either in his hole-in-the-wall store, or in the home of the 30-year-old woman. He filmed all the assaults.

Perumal has been booked under section 376(rape), and various provisions of the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act, 2012 including section 5 (aggravated penetrative sexual assault), 9 (aggravated sexual assault), 13 (use of child for pornographic purposes).

Senior police officials say the two arrested mothers received between one and two thousand rupees every time Perumal sexually assaulted their daughters.

The assaults were discovered by accident .

The city police were cracking down on the illegal sale of chewing tobacco or gutka, banned in Tamil Nadu. Based on a tip-off, they seized 30 packets of gutka from his shop, and then asked for Perumal’s phone. Piqued by his resistance in handing it over and hoping to trace his supplier, they seized both his mobile phones. On one, they found something much worse than the contact details of his supplier. The phone was filled with pornographic videos, many of which showed him sexually abusing different girls, including the seven minors; all the victims are between the ages of 9 and 17. The police then brought in an all-women police team, which decided to visit Kumaran Nagar, five minutes from the ration shop after inquiries with local residents.

“We changed into plain clothes because we were going to try and find the children; we first identified the 9-year-old girl. We were stumped when she said the other girls in the video are her younger (cousin) sister and friends,” said inspector E Rajeshwari.

Within hours five girls were rescued. Later they identified two more girls from the videos but are yet to locate them, Rajeshwari said.

The 28-year-old woman who has been arrested lives in Ezhil Nagar, a resettlement colony where cramped homes stand cheek by jowl, its residents displaced by both the tsunami in 2004 and the 2015 Chennai floods. She moved there three years ago with her husband, a painter, their young daughter, and two sons. Neighbours say even the father did not know what was happening.

According to one neighbour, K Madurai: “He (the husband) only knew that she often took her daughter to Anna Nagar because her mother and sister lived there.”

“We all have several children at home and when she did this to her own daughter, we cannot allow her to come back here,” said another neighbour who asked not to be named.

The pandemic has not been kind to the people of Kumaran Nagar or the resettlement colony. Daily wage work has dried up, for instance. It’s a fertile ground for trafficking, experts warn.

“Global trends during any emergency or disaster have proved that children are the worst hit,” said Andrew Sesuraj, convener of Tamil Nadu Child Rights Watch. “The government data has acknowledged that the pandemic and the ensuing lockdown has led to loss of livelihood, especially in the unorganised sector. The loss of livelihood invariably will lead to increased child labour child marriage, child trafficking. In the given situation, the announcement by the education department to track the children who have not returned to schools after reopening is a welcome move by the state,” he said.

Senior police officials said all five minor victims have been sent to a government-run children’s home in Chennai, at least until investigations are complete. Thus far though, they believe, that only mothers of two of the girls were involved. On Wednesday, the families of two other victims waited desperately to meet their girls outside the children’s home, and said that they had been caught completely unaware. Both families are in the flower business too, but say they did not know how their wards knew Perumal, who’s shop was at least 5km away from Anna Nagar.

The aunt of one of the victims, who is 17, said that the girl finally opened up about the abuse to the police and that even the victim had no idea Perumal was filming his assault.

Before moving in with the aunt, the girl lived with another aunt in the same area, whose 15-year-old daughter is also among the victims. The family told HT both girls had dropped out of school, and sold flowers for a living. “The only time my daughter has been alone is when she has to give flowers to people’s homes who give us a monthly payment. It’s that time of the year when flower sales are brisk because of festivals such as Janmashtami, Onam and Ganesh Chaturthi,” said the mother of the 15-year-old.

Perumal, it turns out, was also a customer. On Tuesday night, three days after they were picked up, the child welfare committee brought the 15-year-old to meet her parents in a police vehicle, with the girl refusing to eat at the children’s home.

Investigators suspect that Perumal may also have circulated the videos of his sexual acts, and his phone has been sent for forensic analysis. “We found that he has been receiving a steady flow of money so we will be freezing his bank account,” said an officer investigating the case.

The police said they are reconstructing the chronology of the events. Thus far, they believe that Perumal’s wife and two adult children were not in the know, and that Perumal first entered into a physical relationship with the two women, 30 and 28, and that their daughters were assaulted at a later stage.

What is clear is that the victims came from poor homes and most of their parents were flower vendors. It has also emerged that all the families have been hit hard economically by the pandemic, and that none of the victims attend school. Most dropped out at some stage.

As did the two women arrested.

In Kumaran Nagar, a tailor recalls stitching school uniforms for the 30-year-old, and also the girl. Everyone here is poor and has always been so, she said, but what happened to the girls is not right. “How will the children ever heal?”

OUT FOR SEIZURE OF GUTKA, POLICE ACCIDENTALLY FOUND VIDEOS OF SEXUAL ASSAULTS IN THE PHONE KEPT BY THE ACCUSED