4 held for ‘abusing’ Kerala minor sisters

FOUR PEOPLE were arrested on Friday for allegedly raping two minor Dalit sisters, whose bodies were found hanging at their house in Kerala’s Palakkad district. The Kerala Police said that the four, N T Shibu, C Madhu, Pradeep Kumar and V Madhuhad, allegedly sexually exploited the girls several times. C Madhu and V Madhu are close relatives of the victims’ mother. Shibu had been staying at their house for the last six years, while Kumar is a neighbour.

“In the single-room house, the girls’ were staying along with their parents, grandmother and a younger brother. The father, a drunkard, allowed Shibu to share the crowded single room. The accused had a habit of boozing with the girls’ father at their house. Last year, the mother had warned one of the accused, C Madhu, against abusing her daughter,’’ said a police source.

The police are yet to ascertain whether the girls were murdered or committed suicide. The death of the girls, aged 11 and nine, had rocked Kerala. The elder sister was found hanging on January 13 and the younger one on March 4. Both bodies were found hanging from a wooden beam when the girls parents were away for work.

The police have been accused of inaction after the autopsy report of the elder sister had suggested that she was subjected to unnatural sex. One of the relatives of the girls arrested on Friday had been taken into custody after the elder sister’s death. But he was freed allegedly due to his links with ruling CPM.

Separately, a 30-year-old man was arrested for allegedly sexually assaulting minor siblings at Malayankeezhu in Thiruvananthapuram. Vinod allegedly assaulted the siblings — a five-year-old girl and her nineyear-old brother — repeatedly over the last three months. The ordeal was exposed after the girl was subjected to medical examination following complaints of health problems. The abused boy is a cancer patient, the police said.