Even as the police are yet to make any headway into the January 11 rape of an eight-year-old girl at Vallakadavu, another girl, whose eyesight was partially impaired, was allegedly abducted from the middle of the city and raped at an isolated spot on Friday. However, the police have managed to nab the accused in the case, with an autorickshaw driver being arrested within hours of the crime. According to the Thampanoor police, the girl, an orphan and a student of a prominent school in the city, had reached Thampanoor to go to a relative’s house around 11 a.m. on Friday. She was reportedly staying in a relative’s house the day before and had gone to her school as well to inquire about an examination. Reaching Thampanoor from the school on a bus, she called an auto-rickshaw to head towards the East Fort bus-stand. However, the autorickshaw driver, who understood that the girl could not see properly, allegedly drove his vehicle in a different direction, heading straight to an isolated spot near the Thiruvananthapuram Medical College Hospital, where he is said to have raped her.
The police said that on the way back, he stopped the autorickshaw near a shop and the girl got down to drink water. At this time, another woman standing nearby noticed the girl in the autorickshaw. Since the woman reportedly knew the auto-driver’s antecedents, she got suspicious and asked the girl about her whereabouts. The police were called in around 3 p.m., by which time the accused fled the spot. The girl then told the police what had happened.
The accused, Harishankar, 47, of Kaladi near Karamana, was nabbed in the wee hours of Saturday. He was produced before court and remanded.
