The Kozhikode First Additional Sessions Judge’s Court will deliver the verdict in the murder case of Adithi S. Namboodiri, a first standard student who succumbed to the physical torture by her father and stepmother, on November 3.
Judge A. Sankaran Nair heard the final arguments in the case on Wednesday. The trial was to begin in May. But the accused jumped bail and the police arrested them from Kuttippuram in Malappuram district. So it commenced in August.
The child, a student of the West Hill B.E.M. Upper Primary School, was brought dead to the Kozhikode Medical College Hospital on April 30, 2013. A post-mortem revealed that the cause of the death was a head injury, prolonged physical torture with sharp objects and starvation.
Key witnesses, including her brother Arun, told the court that her father Subramanian Namboodiri (first accused), a priest at the Bilathikkulam Siva temple here, and his wife Ramla Beegum aka Devika (second accused), had vehemently scolded and tortured them for several months. Their father had cruelly struck his sister several times with a wooden plank on that fateful day, Arun deposed before the court. Subramanian married Ramla six months after his first wife Sreeja died in a motorcycle accident.
The doctor who examined the girl, Childline activists, relatives, neighbours, and teachers were the key witnesses in the case.
