Wednesday, Feb 09, 2005
Wednesday, Feb 09, 2005 |
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Thiruvananthapuram
By Our Staff Reporter
THIRUVANANTHAPURAM, FEB. 8. The police have arrested a 35-year-old man in connection with the rape and murder of a seven-year-old girl in Poovar in December. The accused was identified as Gilbert, a local fisherman who is married and has two children. The victim, Mariam, had gone to wash her clothes in the lagoon near her house on December 25 afternoon. She never returned home, and her body was found floating in the backwaters the next day. Mariam's relatives assumed that she had drowned. But while washing the body, they noticed injuries that indicated sexual assault.
Sexually assaulted
The post-mortem examination revealed that the girl had been sexually assaulted before her death. There were teeth and nail marks on the body. The victim's silver anklets were also missing. The DIG, Southern Range, Arun Kumar Sinha, who supervised the probe, said the police were clueless initially. There were no witnesses to the incident since the beach was almost deserted on Christmas Day afternoon when the crime was committed. The only lead the police had was that Mariam's mother Luciya had seen a `thin, tall and bearded man' while she was searching for her daughter that afternoon. Two children on the beach that day confirmed Luciya's statement.
Police records
The investigation by the Circle Inspector, Poovar, S. S. Firoz, initially focussed on child sex offenders in police records. He probed the whereabouts of one Sebastian (35) who was accused of raping and killing an eight-year-old girl in Poonthura in December 2002. He found that Sebastian was in a prison in Tamil Nadu after being arrested from Tirunelveli recently on the charge of raping and killing a minor girl. Sebastian had been acquitted in the Poonthura case last year. The police questioned more than 300 people to identify the suspect. Then on January 25, Gilbert was arrested by the police in connection with the theft of a gold chain worn by his neighbour's three-year-old daughter. The CI found a receipt issued by a pawnbroker in Gilbert's pocket. The receipt led to the recovery of the silver anklets worn by Mariam at the time of her death.
Dental impression
The CI said the bite marks on Mariam's body matched the dental impression of the accused. Forensic serology experts also found a match in the semen samples taken from the victim's body. The Superintendent of Police, Rural, P. Vijayan and Dy.SP., Neyyattinkara, K. J. Scaria, were also part of the probe team.
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