The court also slapped a fine of Rs 1.09 lakh on Suresh, accused of abducting a girl by luring her with a job offer and then pushing her into forced sex work in 1996.

Suresh
news Court Friday, February 12, 2021 - 18:39
TNM Staff

A court in Kerala's Kottayam on Friday has sentenced the main accused in the 25-year-old Vithura sex racket case to 24 years imprisonment. Additional District Sessions court, pronouncing the quantum of sentence, prime accused Suresh has also been slapped with a fine of Rs 1,09,000. The court had found him guilty on Thursday. The court has also reportedly recommended the Legal Service Authority to give compensation to the girl.

The sentence has been declared after 25 years since the crime. The case pertains to the abduction of a girl, hailing from Vithura in Thiruvananthapuram, and the accused lured her with a job offer and then pushed her into forced sex work. The girl was raped by several people between November 1995 and May 1996.

 
The accused, 52-year-old Suresh, is a native of Kollam. He reportedly also goes by the name Shamsudheen Muhammed Shahjahan. He had introduced himself to the girl as Suresh. During the trial, he stated that his name is Shamsudheen Muhammad Shajahan but the court reportedly didn’t consider the same. Several reports had said that girl was a minor at the time of the incident. The prosecution stated that the survivor was not 18 years old while the defence claimed that she was 19 years old during the time of the occurrence of the crime.

The crime came to light when the girl was nabbed by police along with another accused in the case in July 1996. In a probe, it was revealed that she was abducted and was forced into sex work. Suresh was found guilty under Section 344 (wrongful confinement for ten or more days) and Section 372 (selling minor for purposes of prostitution) of the Indian Penal Code and other sections of Immoral Traffic Prevention Act (ITPA).

After the crime was exposed in 1996, Suresh had gone absconding but surrendered before the court in 2014. This was following the acquittal of the other accused in the case. However, he went absconding again during the trial of the case and was nabbed by the Crime Branch from Hyderabad in 2019. Though 36 people were initially accused in the case, they were acquitted by the trial court as the girl couldn’t identify many of them. 

 

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