In a shocking incident, a 5-year-old girl was abducted, brutally raped and killed allegedly by a migrant worker in Kerala on Saturday. The child, belonging to a migrant worker family from Bihar, lived in the same building as the accused, who too hailed from the same state.
The child, who was alone at her house with her siblings, was found missing by her parents on Friday evening. A search ensued and the police zeroed in on the accused via CCTV footage the same day but could not interrogate him as he was in an inebriated state. Her body was found dumped in a sack in a marshy area behind a local market in the nearby Aluva area. The accused was arrested last night.
Soon after her body was recovered, the Kerala Police posted a public apology for not returning the child alive to her parents. "Sorry daughter," Kerala Police said in a Facebook post. "Our efforts to bring her alive to her parents were unsuccessful. The suspect who kidnapped the child was arrested," read the post in Malayalam.
The incident triggered widespread anger in Kerala. Hundreds turned up for the child's funeral on Sunday, demanding strict punishment, especially the death penalty, for the accused. Many in the crowd broke down as the child's last rites were performed.
"He should be killed in the same manner he killed the child. If the government cannot do it, hand him over to the public," one woman who attended the last rites of the child told PTI.
Another woman said that it was a "shocking and heart-wrenching" incident. "It is unbearable. I could not sleep properly after hearing about this incident. Our laws need to be made more stringent. This should not happen again," she said.
The Congress and BJP alleged lapses on the part of the police and bemoaned the lack of a proper system to monitor migrant labourers. BJP's Kerala unit president K Surendran said there should be a system in place to identify any criminal elements among the migrant workers and the alleged use of drugs by some of them. "There is no monitoring system in place. People are asking for a policing system based on the Uttar Pradesh model. Policing in Kerala is very weak. Proper investigation is not being carried out," he alleged.
Meanwhile, Kerala labour minister V Sivankutty has said that the government would bring in a new law for migrant workers. Warning migrant labourers not to take advantage of the facilities offered to them in Kerala, the minister said such an incident should not happen again.
"Kerala offers the best wage and the fare goes to Rs 1000 per day while it is just Rs 350 in places in Haryana. It is our culture, but migrant labourers shouldn't take advantage of that," he added.
