Last week, a young woman stepped into the Sellur police station around 8 p.m. and complained that her 13-year-old daughter was missing. Immediately, the police swung into action. But, the ‘missing’ case was solved as the girl returned home in the small hours of the following day. As the girl was not ‘harmed,’ the parents were relieved.
Even as the police could heave a sigh of relief, there was a similar complaint from another police station in the city that a 10-year-old girl was missing. The police were on the lookout for the girl, but she was spotted by her friends. Again, there was no complaint of any ‘assault’ on the girl.
A police officer said they did not view them as isolated cases. Special teams of men and women in plainclothes fanned out into the city. One of the teams succeeded in securing a suspect who was picked up from descriptions given by the victims.
Identifying the accused as Murugan (37) of Muniyandipuram near Pasumalai, the police realised that he was a paedophile. Police officers who interrogated him said Murugan took away the girls on his bicycle to different places at night. “On one occasion I took a girl, who was interested in movies, to a cinema hall and later bought her parottas from a famous night restaurant,” he had said. Though, he claimed that he had not sexually assaulted the girls, he had confessed to having undressed them in the dark and dropped them back at their places in the small hours.
A month ago, he had taken two girls aged between 8 and 10 from a residential area under Karupayoorani police station limits.
The modus operandi of Murugan had all the ingredients of a paedophile, said psychiatrist Dheep of Topkids, a counselling centre. “Some people get excited on seeing a male or female in an undressed state, while some others get thrill out of watching pornographic movies or images. A paedophile used to win the confidence of the victim before committing a sexual crime,” he said.
Dr. Dheep said parents with small children must be vigilant. “Whether a working couple or not, parents should always shower love and affection on their children and hear them out on the happenings of the day. Children, especially girls, should be accompanied by a known person when going out,” he suggested.
A senior police officer said Murugan, a mason, was detained under Goondas Act in 2005 for robbery and chain-snatching. Prior to that he was jailed for seven years after he threw acid on his wife.
