AIDWA welcomes the judgment of the Kerala High Court delivered on Friday, 5thApril 2014, in the infamous Suryanelli sex racket case, confirming life sentence on the main accused and also various terms of rigorous imprisonment ranging from 7 to 10 years for 23 of other accused. This brings to the survivor a limited justice, though belated. The verdict comes after an 18 year ordeal which started in 1996, when she was duped and abducted by criminals and then raped and sexually abused under confinement by over 40 men over 42 days. Although a case was registered in 1996 itself and the culprits were awarded punishment by a special court in two cases in 2000 and 2002, the culprits filed an appeal. The Kerala High Court, in a shocking judgment in 2005, had acquitted all the accused excepting one, stating that the girl’s testimony was not reliable and the sexual relationship was consensual. The appeal filed by the girl along with AIDWA in the Supreme Court against the HC judgment was delayed for eight long years until 2013, when in the aftermath of the Nirbhaya rape and murder case in New Delhi, the Supreme Court quashed the HC judgment and ordered a retrial by the High Court. It is this retrial which has now resulted in the punishment of 24 culprits including a district Congress leader. The judgment is the denouement of a long and brave struggle conducted by the victim girl and her family braving social boycott and intimidation by the accused and their friends in the Congress party.
The girl and her family have also been demanding for the trial of another prominent Congress leader, Prof. P.J. Kurien, who is now the Deputy Chairman of the Rajyasabha, who was accused of raping the girl in a rest house. But he was left out from the list of accused based on a discharge order obtained by him from the Kerala High Court in 2007. Since that discharge order was obtained by Prof. Kurien based on the observations in the same 2005 HC judgment acquitting all other accused, there is strong justification for ordering a reinvestigation into the rape charge against Prof. Kurien, in the light of the High Court now finding most of the other accused guilty after a retrial. Congress led UDF government in Kerala has refused to reopen the investigation into the charge all these years. The central Congress leadership has also been protecting Prof. Kurien all along. AIDWA demands a thorough reinvestigation into the charge against Prof. P J.Kurien and the attempts made by Congress to protect the criminals accused in the case. Full justice will be deemed to be done to the rape survivor in this case only after this legal process is also completed
