A three-month old toddler died after his genitals were mutilated allegedly by his 45-year-old grandmother, in Tamil Nadu. The toddler’s twin, a girl, was also found injured in the bathroom wrapped in a dirty cloth. The gruesome crime took place in the twins’s house in Goundampalayam in Coimbatore. The Thudiyalur police are on the lookout for the grandmother named Shanthi whom they say has fled the scene.
According to the police, Shanthi who hails from Madurai had been living with her daughter Aishwarya and Aishwarya’s husband, Baskaran for the last two months to take care of the children. Aishwarya’s younger brother, Hari was also living with them. On the evening of October 21, Aishwarya and Hari went to shop for groceries and returned home in half an hour, leaving the twins alone with Shanthi. When they knocked on the door, no one answered, so Aishwarya phoned her mother who, cops say, told her daughter that she was in the bathroom. When Aishwariya finally entered the house she found Aryan, the baby boy, bleeding from his injuries and covered in a cloth. Aarika was in the bathroom, and had also sustained injuries.
While Aishwarya raised an alarm, her mother walked out to the road and asked for a lift to a passing two-wheeler and fled the scene. Police say she had disappeared like this before on several occasions, but she would return in a few days.
A case has been registered under section 302 of the IPC by the Thudiyalur police. The murder, according to the police statement occured, at 08:45pm, October 21. The postmortem has been completed for Aryan at the Coimbatore Government General Hospital and the report is still pending. Aarika is receiving medical treatment in a Kuppusamy Naidu hospital private hospital in Coimbatore. She is currently in the Intensive Care Unit of the hospital..
The search for Shanthi is still on-going. Shanthi’s husband is a sub-inspector at the Mathichiyam police station in Madurai district.