KOCHI: Now that a new team and a new supervising officer will be appointed to probe Palathayi child sexual abuse case, a new direction is expected in the investigation specifically focusing on the victim’s medical report and consistency in her statements. Though the medical report had confirmed sexual abuse of the victim, it was alleged that the Crime Branch team had totally failed to consider the report and was only trying to corroborate the details provided by the victim in her statements, specifically the dates and time of occurrence of the crime.
“As the victim is a child, the dates and time of occurrence of crime do not hold that much importance considering the fact that the child could forget specific details. For all these days, the investigation team was trying to link the accused with the crime by corroborating the evidence based on the dates and time provided by the victim,” said the victim’s counsel, Mohammed Shah.
He said though the Crime Branch had submitted five statements before the Pocso Special Court which it claimed to be those of the victim, the family had contested that they had no idea about one of the statements because the victim had never given any such a statement. The victim’s mother also disputed the content in two other statements.
“As per the medical report, it’s certain that sexual abuse had taken place. The investigation team also failed to audio record/videograph the entire statement given by the victim,” Shah said, adding that the statements given by the victim and a prime witness before the magistrate under Section 164 of the Criminal Procedure Code were also not produced by the probe team before the special court along with the chargesheet.
A senior police officer said the new team will have a challenging task ahead as they had to first check the consistency in the statements given by the victim, the doctor who prepared the medical report and also the prime witnesses. “A lot of procedures including the crime scene analysis need to be done again thoroughly,” the officer added.