Police have released the sketch of the main suspect in the Kerala student's rape and murder.
Highlights
- Law student raped and killed a week ago, intestines pulled out
- For a year, she was being harassed, her mother reportedly says
- Cops ignored appeal for help, mother says. No arrests yet
A law student who was barbarically raped and killed in her home in Kerala had complained for nearly a year to the police that she was being harassed, but was ignored, her mother has reportedly told officers.
A sketch of the suspect has been released by the police, though nobody has been arrested so far for the attack which is being compared to the 2012 fatal gang-rape of a Delhi student on a moving bus.
The Dalit student was stabbed 30 times and found by her mother with her intestines pulled out a week ago in Ernakulam. Her back was covered with bite marks.
It was only yesterday that the police cordoned off her house as a crime scene and brought in forensic experts to collect evidence, fuelling public anger over the crime and the lax response to it.
The Kerala student's mother was hospitalised owing to her trauma and shock. After visiting her this morning, Chief Minister Oomen Chandy told reporters, "I assure you there will be no lapses legally with this case."
Nobody has been arrested so far for the brutal murder of the woman in Kerala's Ernakulam.
Kerala is in the midst of its election. Friends of the student and women activists have said that to protect the government from embarrassment, for days, the police tried to cover up the grizzliest details of the case, particularly the fact that she was raped.
The police says that neighbours appear to have ignored her cries for help. One resident who did not wish to be named said that the student's home was a frequent site of noisy quarrels, so nobody intervened. Another said no shouts on the day of the murder were heard.
"Neighbours have come forward and said they heard noises and saw a man leaving the woman's home on April 28, the day of the murder. It appears to be someone she knew and we are following the leads we have," said district police chief Yatish Chandra.
At least 35 to 40 per cent of families in Kerala are headed by women. Even the mother of this young Dalit woman was bringing up two daughters in a vulnerable space with no security," said J Devika of the Centre for Development Studies, a research institute, in the state capital of Thiruvanthapuram. "That is disturbing and as is the fact that no one cared until it hit the headlines five days later," Devika said.