Victim was drugged before sexual assault

Accused in Latvian’s murder case sent to police custody

A candlelight vigil was organised at Marine Drive in Kochi on Thursday to seek justice for the Latvian tourist, who was raped and murdered in Thiruvananthapuram. Photo: Thulasi Kakkat

The State police told a magistrate court here on Friday that the accused in the Latvian rape-murder case had plied their unsuspecting victim with ‘white-beedi’, tourist parlance in Kovalam for a mini-cigar laced heavily with marijuana, before they raped and strangulated her to death.

Officers said the European woman had on March 14 morning aimlessly wandered off to the wooded estuary area from the Grove Beach in Kovalam. She had a history of clinical depression. They described the victim as an easily trusting person with a penchant to roam.

Many saw her here

The police case was the accused, Umesh and Udayan, had enticed the woman into following them to the secluded spot covered with thick shrubbery. Several witnesses had seen her in the area, which the accused treated as their private backyard. However, nobody saw her go back.

The police said they believed the accused doped their victim to erode her resistance and repeatedly raped her. Their case was that the accused strangled her to death when she came to her senses and resisted around 5.30 p.m. They later strung her up with a creeper’s wine to make the murder appear as a suicide. A passer-by found her skeletal remains with the head severed 40 days later and alerted the police.

Sexual predation

A background check on the accused revealed that Umesh had a history of sexual predation. One of his victims, a youth, has testified to the police that Umesh had sexually assaulted him at the spot earlier.

Investigators said Umesh, 28, was a school dropout. His father was a traditional estuary fisher.

Umesh had picked up some German and English when he worked briefly as a European tourist’s handy-man in 2014.

A local caterer later employed him to cart his heavy cook-ware from one venue to another. Officers said Umesh also had a violent past marked by at least 13 cases involving street brawls and drug abuse.

They told the court that Udayan and Umesh often operated as a pair. They used the spot where they killed their victim for their daily ablutions. It was also a sanctuary for them to drink, smoke marijuana and bring sex workers.

The accused told the Magistrate that they had been tortured by the police and their statement was not voluntary.

The police have charged them with murder, gang-rape, destruction of evidence and drug abuse. The court granted them the custody of the accused till March 17.