Representative image showing a police report.
Credit: iStock Photo
Idukki, Kerala: The Kerala police have booked the relative of the man acquitted in the Vandiperiyar rape and murder case for attempting to kill two members of the victim's family, according to an FIR registered in connection with the incident.
Vandiperiyar police booked Babu alias Palraj (46), a close relative of Arjun, who was acquitted by a local court in the rape-cum-murder case, for offences under section 307 (attempted murder), 324 (causing hurt with a dangerous weapon) and 294(b) (uttering obscene words in publlc) under the IPC.
Palraj was arrested on Saturday evening, police said.
According to the FIR in the case, the accused attacked the father of the minor victim in the rape-cum-murder case with a sharp weapon intending to kill him.
The FIR also stated that when the minor girl's grandfather tried to intervene, he was also stabbed in the shoulder by the accused.
According to the police, the accused used obscene words against the minor girl's family to cause them emotional distress.
The incident occurred on Saturday morning at a place near Vandiperiyar town.
The father and grandfather of the minor girl are undergoing treatment at Kottayam medical college.
The Kerala Pradesh Congress Committee (KPCC) is expected to hold a protest on Sunday at Vandiperiyar expressing solidarity with the victim's family.
A POCSO court, on December 14, 2023 acquitted Arjun (24), in the case, saying the "prosecution failed to establish all the circumstances which are consistent with the guilt of the accused and inconsistent with his innocence."
Subsequently, the Kerala High Court had on January 4 admitted the state government's appeal against the acquittal in the case.
The six-year-old girl was found hanging inside her house on June 30, 2021, when her parents went out for work in a nearby plantation.
Police had initially registered a case of unnatural death, but the autopsy report confirmed that the child was raped before she was hanged.