A red faded underwear with a sanitary pad is seen lying in a thicket. Broken shards of bangles are found strewn a few feet away. This thicket was reportedly the desolate spot where, on November 5, two men grabbed a 16-year-old tribal girl on her way to attend nature’s call and raped her . Five days later, the girl died of complications allegedly resulting from lack of timely medical care.
More than a week had passed since the occurrence of the crime. But that thicket as the crime scene was never inspected by the police and the evidence is still out there in the desolate spot, stuff that the police never collected to submit for forensic examination.
On November 13, a fact-finding team comprising activists videotaped the crime scene as it was, along with its abandoned evidence. The video is available with The Hindu .
The team of 15 activists that visited Sipling village in Harur on Tuesday also had a first-hand experience of violence at the hands of the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK) cadre and the police, according to the accounts of activist Grace Banu to The Hindu .
The activists were sitting inside the house interacting with the victim’s family, when a group of AIADMK men reportedly came to the house and asked the team to move out, says Ms. Banu, a transwoman activist. “They said, the Minister (K.P.Anbalagan) was coming and that we cannot stay there... We refused and an AIADMK man pushed Valarmathi (student activist) down. He also grabbed the phone from the hands of another activist who was videotaping the scene.”
Then they turned to the victim’s mother and warned her not to talk to us. “One man instructed the mother to run and fall at the feet of the Minister when he enters the house and wail holding his feet,” the activist said.
According to Ms. Banu, the activists stepped out and waited till the Minister left. Soon after the Minister left, and as the team prepared to leave, some 100 policemen rounded them up and forced them to get into a police van. “We refused saying we came by a van and we will leave in it.”
But for the two transwomen activists in the team the worst was yet to come, says Ms. Banu. “This other activist Anushree and I underwent our surgeries recently and we urgently needed to use a toilet somewhere, but could not find one. So we stopped the van and got out to look for a secluded place we could use.”
But the Deputy Superintendent of Police of Harur, Sellapandian, yelled at them for getting out and asked them to get back in, alleges Ms. Banu. “We tried explaining in front of all the male police and told him we cannot go any further. He ordered five women police to go with us and had us attend nature’s call without any privacy,” claims Banu.
The van bearing the 15 activists was then diverted to Harur Police Station and the activists, including a little boy with his mother, were taken into the station at 3.45 p.m. Up to 8.30 p.m, the activists were detained. “We had three lawyers in our team and not one explanation for our detention was given. We arrived as part of Pengal Koottamaippu (Women's Collective) on a fact-finding mission. But they said we were there to plot a conspiracy. We were also warned that they would slap cases against us.”
When The Hindu spoke to Mr. Sellapandian on the specific allegations, he said: “They were all lawyers, activists, and were let off yesterday itself, except for four people.”
However, on Tuesday, the DSP said they were detained based on “intelligence inputs”.
Four of the activists including Valarmathi were remanded under Section 143 of the Indian Penal Code and Section 7(1) a of Criminal Law Amendment Act.
Krishnagiri Superintendent of Police D. Mahesh Kumar said the activists were “Maoists in the garb of human rights activists” and hence were detained.
