The ghastly murder and sexual harassment of a nine-year-old girl has shaken the conscience of Puducherry. A day after her body was laid to rest amid huge outrage, life in the tourist city came to a halt on Friday as the opposition parties called for a bandh.
Protesters marched to the Raj Nivas, attempting to break the security cordon and raising slogans against the Lt Governor, the administrator of the Union territory, Chief Minister N Rangasamy and Home Minister A Namassivayam. What has irked people is the thriving drug mafia in the city and the initial apathy of cops that led to a tardy investigation in the missing-girl complaint.
Quick parallels are drawn between the increasing number of POCSO (Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act) cases and the lack of measures in eradicating the drug menace. When the girl went missing on March 2, the family approached the local police. But despite CCTV footage showing the girl, the search did not yield any outcome. Her decomposed body was finally found in a drain near her house on March 5. Two suspects, allegedly drug peddlers, have been booked under the Penal Code sections for murder, kidnap, wrongful confinement and causing disappearance of evidence.
The POCSO Act and the Prevention of Atrocities against Scheduled Castes/Scheduled Tribes Act have also been invoked. The massive outrage and the emotionally-charged funeral procession have now forced the administration to act; two police officers have been transferred.
The news of girl’s murder and sexual assault comes on the heels of a few major drug hauls in Tamil Nadu that has inevitably stirred a political war. Directorate of Revenue Intelligence sleuths and the Coast Guard seized 99 kg of hashish that was being smuggled to Sri Lanka. They also recovered 36 kg of methamphetamine worth Rs 180 crore from a couple—about 30 kg in Madurai and the rest from a dump yard in Chennai.
The ruling DMK recently sacked a functionary, Jaffer Sadiq, from the party’s primary membership amid allegations of his links with a large international drug cartel that was jointly busted by the Delhi Police and Narcotics Control Bureau. The hauls show that cops and other authorities are staying vigilant, but they ought to take more stringent action against peddlers and other offenders. Creating awareness among students is equally important.
