A former assistant professor of clinical psychology, Gireesh was famous due to a televised phone-in programme on mental health issues.
Television screengrab of Gireesh's phone-in programme.
Well-known psychologist Dr K Gireesh, popular in Kerala for his phone-in programme on mental health challenges (telecast by a prominent private Malayalam television channel), was sentenced to seven years rigorous imprisonment on Thursday, 27 April, in a three-year-old case of sexual assault.
The victim was a 14-year-old boy whose family approached Gireesh for counselling.
The special fast-track court that heard the case also slapped a fine of ₹1.5 lakh on the 59-year-old, who was, till recently, an assistant professor of clinical psychology at the Thiruvananthapuram Government Medical College Hospital.
Dr Gireesh
Judge Aaj Sudarshan rejected Gireesh’s claim that the accusation was frivolous and that some of his enemies influenced the boy and his parents to level such an allegation.
Gireesh argued that there was a conspiracy behind the allegation and that it was part of the professional jealousy of his rivals who wanted to hamper his chances of being appointed as the director of the Kerala State Institute of the Mentally Challenged.
Based on the evidence furnished by prosecutor RS Vijaya Mohan, the court found Gireesh guilty of sexually abusing the boy repeatedly in his private clinic, located in the cellar of his house in Thiruvananthapuram, between 2015 and 2017.
The trauma of the repeated sexual abuse and threats over revealing the incidents to anyone had increased the psychological trauma experienced by the boy, and he had to approach a few other leading psychologists.
As none of them could identify the reason for his increasing mental trauma, the boy was admitted to the psychiatry ward of the medical college hospital. It was here that the boy disclosed everything to the doctors, most of them contemporaries and colleagues of Gireesh.
When the doctors informed the police, criminal action was taken against Gireesh. A year ago, the same court had sentenced Gireesh to six years rigorous imprisonment in a similar case. He was on bail when the judgement was delivered in the second case.
Though the court awarded him a total of 26 years for various offences, Gireesh will have to serve only seven years, the maximum punishment for a single offence.
According to the prosecution, Gireesh used to show obscene sexual videos to the boy during his counselling sessions after directing the parents to wait outside.
The prosecution said that the boy was initially taken to counselling at Gireesh’s clinic due to severe learning difficulties. Gireesh set a series of counselling sessions to heal him, and the sessions took place once or twice a month at his clinic.
Gireesh was found guilty under Sections 7 (sexual assault), 9(e) (aggravated sexual assault committed by the management staff of a government or private hospital in that hospital), 9(l) (repeated sexual assault), 10 (punishment for aggravated sexual assault), 11(iii) (sexual harassment by showing an object or media to a child for pornographic purposes), and 12 (punishment for sexual harassment of a child) of the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act.
In January 2017, Gireesh was accused of sexually harassing a 23-year-old woman during counselling and police registered a case against him. However, the case was dropped halfway with the woman approaching the high court, saying that she did not wish to pursue it.
Six months later, a case of sexually abusing a 13-year-old boy surfaced. In that case, he was sentenced last year and, later, released on bail.
The prosecution told the court that in both cases, Gireesh touched the boys’ private parts and repeatedly kissed them.
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