Police form special team to probe Walayar case
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The Kerala Police have fashioned a special team to reinvestigate the demise by suspected suicide of two minor Dalit ladies, each sisters from an impoverished household, at Walayar in Palakkad in 2017.
State Police Chief Loknath Behera has tapped R. Nishanthini, Superintendent of Police, to head the probe. He has constituted a special investigation team (SIT) for the aim.
After a trial courtroom acquitted the three individuals alleged to be liable for their deaths, the federal government and the police had come beneath withering criticism from throughout the social and political spectrum for “sabotaging” the investigation and subsequent prosecution to save the accused.
The High Court had just lately put aside the acquittal by a special courtroom for the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO). It slammed the ruined prosecution and ordered an additional inquiry and retrial.
The SIT would give an utility within the POCSO courtroom searching for a reinvestigation. The authorities had handed over the case to the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI). However, the SIT would instantly begin the probe and hand over the case to the CBI as and when it comes on board.
The case had turn into a political sizzling potato for the federal government. The Congress and the Bharatiya Janata Party alleged that the suspects, all males within the neighbourhood of the victims, had been Communist Party of India (Marxist) [CPI(M)] supporters. They alleged the police had consequently developed chilly ft and scuttled the probe bowing to political affect.
Moreover, Opposition events identified that the lawyer who defended the accused was a CPI(M) functionary who had officiated for years because the District Child Welfare Committee’s chairperson. They stated all the case smacked of battle of curiosity and conspiracy to save the accused.
The alleged police apathy to the Dalit household’s plight had pushed the victims’ mother and father to the road to search justice for his or her wards.
The couple additionally moved the High Court for a reinvestigation. The mother and father additionally sought a parallel probe into the “shoddy” police investigation that saved the suspects from conviction.
The authorities had supported the mother and father’ plea to overturn the accused’s acquittal and institute a re-inquiry. It had additionally appointed a fee of inquiry to probe the matter. The fee had identified extreme flaws within the investigation and defective prosecution as causes for the acquittal.
