Prime Suspect's Father Dies In Fake NCC Camp Sexual Abuse Case

The main accused in the fake National Cadet Corps (NCC) camp sexual assault case in Tamil Nadu and his father have both died, police said. The state opposition leader  Edappadi K Palaniswami and BJP chief K Annamalai have raised questions of criminality to protect any key suspects.

The police have claimed that the accused's father Ashokumar died first, on Thursday night after falling from the two-wheeler he was riding. 

The accused then died by suicide in a government hospital in Salem in the early hours of Friday.

Sivaraman, who had been accused of sexually assaulting a class 8 girl, and harassing 12 students, police say had consumed rat poison ahead of his arrest, owing to family problems. He was shifted from Krishnagiri to Salem for specialised treatment, where he died.

Eleven people, including two teachers, the principal, and a correspondent of the private school where the incident took place have been arrested under the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act.

The school did not conduct any background checks on the group that had claimed their camp on the school campus would qualify them to get an NCC unit. They did not deploy any teachers to monitor the camp as well. The management did not inform the police after the girls complained of sexual offences perpetrated on them. Instead, the school has been accused of asking the students to not take the alleged abuse seriously.

A Special Investigation Team (SIT) probe is now underway to investigate if the fake trainers had committed sexual offences in camps at other schools. Another multi-disciplinary team will identify the causes that led to these sexual offences and recommend measures to avert such incidents in the future. 

Activists say, that though Tamil Nadu has a pro-active protocol in place for acknowledging possibilities of sexual violations in schools, the latest event has exposed the lack of mechanism to ensure compliance by schools.