KANNUR: Probing the death of 11-year-old M M Fathima who had died under suspicious circumstances, the Kannur city police on Wednesday arrested two persons including the girl’s father, Abdul Sathar, 55, of Naluvayal. Muhammad Uwaiz, 30, Imam of the Kunhippally mosque in the city, is the other person arrested. The duo has been charged with culpable homicide not amounting to murder under IPC and under the Juvenile Justice Act, said City Police Commissioner R Ilango.
Fathima was brought to a private hospital in Kannur on Sunday morning with high fever and breathing difficulty. Despite the hospital authorities’ best efforts, her life could not be saved as she was brought in too late. The child’s relatives raised doubts about her death and lodged a complaint with the police. On Monday, the police registered a case for unnatural death.
It is alleged that Fathima’s parents refused to give her medical attention and opted for religious witchcraft instead. During interrogation, Uwaiz is learnt to have confessed that he had prevented the parents from going to the hospital. He told the police that he had given the girl ‘sacred water’ after chanting and blowing into it.
Police probing five more suspicious deaths in Naluvayal area
Kannur : On Wednesday, the city police called Uwaiz to the station and recorded his arrest. Sathar was arrested from his house around 11am. The two were presented before the Kannur Judicial First Class Magistrate court which remanded them for two weeks. Besides Fathima’s alleged murder, the police are also investigating the deaths of five more persons in the Naluvayal area, three of those in her family.
The police said a 70-year-old woman, of Azad Road, and her son and sister, all of them from the family of Sathar, had died under similar circumstances. Uwaiz had also advised many people in the region not to take the Covid vaccine, the police said.
He used to discourage people from seeking either allopathic or ayurvedic medicines. Besides Uwaiz, there are other people in the region who indulge in witchcraft and black magic, the police said. More people will soon be brought before the law, the police added.