Kerala Dalit woman’s rape-murder: Accused convicted, sentencing tomorrow
The prosecution has said that the convict should be given a death sentence since the brutality in the crime made it a ‘rarest of rare’ case.
india Updated: Dec 12, 2017 12:07 IST
The man accused of raping and torturing to death a 29-year-old woman in Kerala’s Ernakulam last year was convicted by a trial court on Tuesday amid demands for capital punishment.
The crime took place on April 28, 2016 and triggered widespread protests in the state, turning into a political issue as well since Kerala was at the time about to vote for a new government.
Ameer ul Islam, a migrant worker from Assam, was caught 50 days after what began as a near-blind case.
The woman, a Dalit and the daughter of a casual labourer, was found dead, disembowelled in her house with more than 30 stab wounds.
The brutality brought back memories of the December 16, 2014 gangrape in Delhi that is regarded as a tipping point for the country’s tolerance of sexual crimes. Like the Delhi case, thousands took to the streets in anger in Kerala after the murder.
The court found Islam guilty of murder, rape, destruction of evidence and crimes under the SC/ST Act.
The trial started in April 2017 and was completed in eight months. As many as 100 witnesses were heard and 291 documents and DNA test reports were presented.
After Islam’s arrest, police said he was a drug addict and suffering from serious sexual disorders.