KOCHI: The police have untangled a dark episode of rape, intimidation and blackmail perpetrated on a woman allegedly by a 63-year-old and his son using a voice clip. Based on a complaint lodged by the survivor, the Mattanchery police registered a case against the father-son duo on April 14 and have unravelled how they blackmailed the woman for sexual favours.
While the father was charged with threatening the woman for sexual favours, his son was booked for rape, a police officer said. The police said the accused were immediate neighbours of the woman and she ran into trouble when she made calls to a male friend from the senior man’s mobile phone.
“The issue began from November, 2019. The woman kept it a secret fearing repercussions. But when the son shared the audio clip to a third person, she decided to approach the police,” said the officer. The probe report said the father, who recorded the conversation between the woman and her friend, demanded sexual favours from her threatening to send the audio file to her husband.
The woman then approached the son seeking his help to delete that particular voice clip from his father’s mobile phone. The son transferred the voice clip to his phone and convinced the woman that the clip had been deleted from his father’s phone. Later, the son too started blackmailing her. One day in November 2019, he raped the woman by threatening to pass on the voice recording to her husband and other relatives, the report said.
According to the survivor’s complaint, the son raped her on four occasions, the last incident happening in May 2020. Later, he shared the voice clip to a third person who too started threatening the woman in the same manner, the complaint said.
“The father has availed anticipatory bail from a court. We have launched a detailed probe, and the mobile phones of the accused have been seized for forensic analysis,’’ police said.