Kerala law student rape and murder: The brutality of the crime had invoked massive protests
In April last year, a 30-year-old law student was found murdered at her home in Kerala's Ernakulam, her naked body bearing marks of extreme torture. A court in Kochi today held a migrant worker from Assam, Ameer-ul-Aslam, guilty of Jisha's rape and murder.
As the judgement was being pronounced, the convict said thrice: "I am innocent, the police just arrested me and took me away." He will be sentenced tomorrow.
Jisha's mother was in court. She was the one who found her daughter's body with wounds from sharp objects and the intestines pulled out, a gruesome reminder of the fatal gang-rape and torture of Nirbhaya inside a moving bus in Delhi in 2012. The shock of the brutal crime sent her to hospital for days. She has demanded capital punishment for the convict.
"I am happy that he has been convicted. I want him to get death sentence. He killed my daughter, now he should be killed. What happened to my daughter, should not happen to anyone else", Jisha's mother, Rajeshwari told NDTV in court.
About 50 days after the murder, the police arrested Ameer-ul-Islam, a neighbor, and said he entered Jisha's house to rape her but killed her with a sharp object when she resisted.
The crime jolted Kerala and provoked massive protests. Besides the sheer horror of the assault and killing, the crime fueled politics as it brought into sharp focus the family's struggle with poverty.
Jisha shared a one-room home without a toilet with her mother and sister. In the assembly polls last year, political parties attacked the then Congress-led United Democratic Front regime over what they called a slow investigation and the poor living conditions of Jisha's all-women family.
So crucial was the case that the Left Democratic Front, after taking charge on May 25, changed the investigation team in its very first cabinet meeting. As many as 100 witnesses were examined during the trial. The prosecution described it as a rarest of rare case.
More than 100 policemen questioned over 1,500 people and fingerprints of over 5,000 people were examined by a Special Investigation Team that went through over 20 lakh telephonic conversations before zeroing in on Ameer.
The police said blood-stained footwear found from a canal near Jisha's house was a important piece of evidence in identifying the accused.