The police were left with egg on their face when an 18-year-old higher secondary student walked out of Tirur sub-jail on Saturday after 35 days of incarceration. He was jailed in a Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act (POCSO) case after a 17-year-old schoolgirl alleged that he had raped and impregnated her.
A DNA examination conducted on the girl proved that the boy was not responsible for her pregnancy. The POCSO court which had ordered that he be put behind the bars ordered his release following this.
The Plus-Two student from Tennala, near Tirurangadi, said that he knew the girl for about a year from school but had not abused her. He said he underwent severe mental trauma after being wrongly arraigned in a POCSO case.
“Who is going to compensate me for what I suffered these days? I am a student. I was taken to two police stations and three jails,” he said.
The police had picked him up at midnight from his house and taken him to the station without even telling his family the reason for the arrest. “In the jeep, one constable showered me with abuses. At the police station, he threatened to apply pepper spray on my genitals,”
he said.
He had been taken to the girl’s house with handcuffs the next morning. “I could not hear properly for many days after a sub-inspector (SI) slapped on my face. The worst police behaviour was at Kalpakanchery station,” he said.
He said that the case should be investigated properly and the culprits brought to book.