Despite medical reports stating that the child was sexually assaulted multiple times, the police delayed the arrest by a month, the family alleged.
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Over a month after a Kerala family filed a complaint that their 12-year-old daughter was sexually assaulted by a man, the Kudiyanmala police in Kannur district, finally arrested the 61-year-old accused. The arrest was made on Saturday, a day after the family came out in the media alleging that there was police laxity in delaying the arrest. It was on November 16 that the parents of the class seven girl residing at Venkunnu near Taliparamba in Kannur filed a complaint that their neighbour had been sexually assaulting the child. Despite medical reports stating that the child was had been subjected to sexual assault multiple times, the police did not arrest the accused, the family alleged. “It is after we complained to the Deputy Superintendent of police and came out to the media, that the Kudiyanmala police officials made the arrest of the man,” the child’s mother told TNM. According to the police, the man named Aloysius alias Jose was arrested on charges of rape and also under various sections of the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) and Indian Penal Code. According to the family, the child who was alone at home with her younger brother when her parents went to work, was assaulted multiple times by the man who entered the house. “Both my husband and I used to go for tapping rubber everyday. We would always lock the front door from outside but the back door would mostly be kept open as the toilet is located outside the house. But this man attacked my child after entering the house through the back door,” said the mother. According to the family, the incidents of assault came to light a month back, when the child indicated the same to her grandmother over the phone. She said that the accused was distressing her saying that he wanted to marry her. “But even then she did not say she was being assaulted. She must have been scared. When I came to know about this, I sought the help of a doctor to counsel her as she was not revealing anything to us. It was in the counselling that it came out that she was being assaulted for some time by this man,” she added. The family filed a complaint and a medical examination of the child was conducted. “But the police were delaying arrest stating that the accused has moved court for anticipatory bail. Since it was over a month and there has been no development in the court, we filed a complaint with Taliparamba DySP and came out to the media. The very next day, he was arrested by the local police,” says the mother. The mother asked how come the police were willing to arrest the accused now and were not ready to do it before. When TNM spoke to officials of the Kudiyanmala police station, they said that a pre-arrest application filed the accused was still pending in court, but they finally made the arrest after taking legal advice. “So why couldn’t they do this before? There was an attempt to help the accused,” the child's mother alleged. According to the mother, the accused had in the past sexually harassed her also while she was working at his house. “Last year, I stopped working there after he misbehaved with me,” she said. Read: Why acquittals are so high in child sexual abuse cases in Kerala
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