... in God's own country:
THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Three students of a nursing school [Kottayam Medical College] in Kerala's Kottayam district were on Wednesday found guilty of raping a junior during ragging.
Renjith Varghese, Sherin and Shaffeq Yusuf faced charges of gangrape and violation of Kerala Prohibition of Ragging Act committed on the campus of the School of Medical Education in November 2005.
Special judge Sasidharan Nair let off three other students, the Director and Principal of the nursing school and the head of department of psychiatry in the Kottayam Medical College, who had also been named in the chargesheet in January 2006 for insufficient evidence. The officials had been charged with conspiracy to destroy evidence. [link]
More details from Haindava Keralam, mugshots of perps available on KeralaOnline. Reticence of The Hindu can be seen here ("ragging" case).
The troubling part is the systematic effort on the part of the authorities to hush up the incident, including manipulation of medical evidence. In the end only three students are actually convicted. Three students (Ashly Varghese, Robin Paul, Divin Philip ), the Principal (K.M. Mariam), the Director (Muraleedharan) and head of the Department of Psychiatry (Dr. Zybunneesa Beevi) were found not guilty. The trial would have been highly technical in nature.
Private minority medical school, political connections, selective convictions - it's all there.
It is not clear if these incidents (read the last part) fall into the chilling pattern of hate crimes. In any case, the poor girl learnt her lessons in secularism in a particularly cruel way.
2 comments:
There are way too many cases with perps from one set of religions and victims from another religion, coming from Kerala. The Keralites will need to deal with it. If they still need the pride in electing secular parties, may be they just deserve this.
There was the Navukkarasu case in TN, where the perp's religious transformations in jail led to some outcome to the case.
spelling error in that comment, Navarasu was the name of the victim in TN. Annamalai university.
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