A day after the Unnao rape victim died at the Safdarjung Hospital, two accused in two cases of rape and murder were thrashed in public in Kerala’s Palakkad and Madhya Pradesh’s Mhow on Saturday.
In Palakkad, an accused in the Walayar rape and death case of two minor sisters was on Saturday thrashed by a group of people following an altercation, the police said. M Madhu, the third accused in the case, who was acquitted recently by a lower court, allegedly got into an argument with the group near his house, the police said.
"The group allegedly called him (Madhu) a rapist when he came to his house from Coimbatore. The man used some vulgar expressions, words and picked up a fight with the locals following which he was thrashed," the Palakkad police chief said.
However, Madhu's mother told the media that the attackers were from Sangh Parivar, he said. The accused has been admitted to the district hospital in Palakkad.
The police official further said a case has been registered against four people.
"We have also taken three of them into custody. The probe is on," police said.
The state government had recently ordered a judicial probe into the death of siblings by suicide after they were sexually exploited at Walayar in Palakkad district.
The older child (13) was found hanging in her house on January 13, 2017, while her nine-year-old sister died 52 days later in a similar manner.
The police had arrested four people, one of whom was acquitted in September this year, and the three others on October 25.
The accused were charged with abetment of suicide and rape, the police said.
The POCSO (Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act) court in Palakkad, while acquitting the accused, had pulled up the investigation team, saying it did not present enough scientific evidence.
Following widespread protests, the government had on November 20 filed an appeal in the high court challenging the acquittal, saying the lower court verdict was 'absolutely perverse and wholly unsustainable.'
In Mhow, a 28-year-old man, accused of raping and killing a four-year-old girl, was thrashed by a group of lawyers on the premises of a court in Madhya Pradesh's Indore district on Saturday.
Ankit Vijayvargiya, the accused, was brought to the sessions court at Mhow town after his three-day police remand ended.
Eye-witnesses said the moment he and the policemen escorting him entered the premises, two unidentified lawyers lunged at him and started beating him. Other lawyers soon joined them.
The police finally extricated him from the melee, and took him inside.
Vijayvargiya did not receive any serious injury in the incident. The police produced him before Additional Sessions Judge Sonali Patel who remanded him in judicial custody.
No case had been registered yet in connection with the assault on the court premises, a local police official said.
Meanwhile, the Mhow Bar Association has unanimously decided that no lawyer will defend Vijayvargiya, Association president Ravi Arya said. Vijayvargiya is accused of raping and killing a four- year-old girl near Mhow railway station on Sunday night.
After his arrest, he confessed to picking up the girl when she was sleeping with her parents under the overbridge near the station, the police said.
He allegedly took her to an abandoned army bungalow, raped her and strangled her to stop her from crying. The police arrested him on the basis of CCTV footage in the area.
(With PTI inputs)
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