The man lured the girl on the pretext of buying her juice, took her to the Aluva market and committed the brutal crime.
Published Nov 04, 2023 | 1:52 PM ⚊ Updated Nov 04, 2023 | 11:36 PM
Police said Asfaq Alam confessed to the crime. (Supplied)
A POCSO court in Kochi on Saturday, 4 November, convicted the lone accused in the sensational Aluva child rape and murder case.
Special POCSO (Protection of Children from Sexual Offences) court judge K Soman convicted Asfaq Alam, a migrant labourer from Bihar, for raping and murdering a five-year-old girl, also from Bihar.
The judge said the accused was found guilty of all the offences and posted the matter to 9 November for pronouncing the quantum of the sentence.
The conviction came 100 days after the crime was committed.
Public prosecutor G Mohanraj, who met the media said the prosecution considers this case as a rarest of the rare incident and will seek maximum punishment of death penalty to the accused.
“The court has found the accused guilty of all the 16 offences in the chargesheet. Out of which five are punishable with death penalty,” Mohanraj told PTI.
The state government will file a report on the reformation possibility of the accused, while the jail authorities will have to file a report on his conduct inside the prison, Mohanraj added. The probation officer will file a report on the social status of the accused.
Addressing media outside the court, Ernakulam Rural police chief Vivek Kumar, who headed the investigation, said the chargesheet in the case was filed within 30 days.
“I feel very proud, my team is very proud that we are part of a system in which the conviction was given after 100 days of incident,” he said.
He noted that it was one of the fastest trials in the entire country.
The girl was playing outside the building near Garage Junction where she had been living with her family on 28 July.
Around 3 pm, the girl went missing, and her family launched a search before informing the police at 7 pm.
On checking the visuals from the CCTV cameras in the neighbourhood, the police found the girl accompanying Alam. The police found the man within an hour, but could not glean any information since he was heavily drunk.
Even as the visuals went viral on social media, a headload worker at the Aluva market adjacent to the Periyar river informed the police that he had seen Aslam with a girl. Aslam reportedly told the man that the child was his daughter.
On 29 July, the search for the girl came to an end when the investigators and residents found her body packed in a gunny bag. The sack was thrown into a garbage heap. Meanwhile, Aslam confessed to the crime early in the morning and told officers that he had raped and killed the girl.
The man also told investigators that he had lured the girl by offering her a spiked fruit juice. It was later revealed that he had strangulated the girl and smashed her head with a stone.
‘Dear child, we are sorry’, say Kerala Police
The incident shocked the collective conscience of Kerala, and the police took to Facebook, saying, “Dear child, we are sorry.” The police admitted that their efforts to reunite the child with her parents had failed.
In September, a similar incident took place, when an eight-year-old girl was sexually assaulted.
The survivor was found abandoned in a paddy field near Aluva.
The accused, Christil (36), was identified as a native of Thiruvananthapuram who has been residing in Aluva for the past one and a half years.
(With PTI inputs)
