MALAPPURAM: A 15-year-old boy tried to rape a 23-year-old woman after stalking her, dragging her to a nearby plantain farm and hitting her face with a stone at Kottukkara in Kondotty on Monday. The Class 10 student, who is also the district-level judo champion, was identified from the descriptions given by the woman and the CCTV footage. He was detained on Tuesday. The boy confessed to the crime during interrogation, the police said. He will be produced before the juvenile justice board.
The incident happened around 12.45pm on Monday. The woman was walking from her house to Kottukkara junction to go to a computer centre in Kondotty where she studies. The boy who followed her grabbed her from behind and dragged her to the plantain farm and hit her face with a stone when she resisted the rape attempt. He tied her hands using her overcoat.
“Still, she managed to wriggle out of his grip and run into a nearby house as he was trying to grab another stone to attack her,” Ummer Farook, Kottukkara ward councillor of Kondotty municipality, who reached the house after the woman living there raised the alarm.
“The girl’s face was swollen. The attacker had ripped her dress. We gave the injured woman first aid and shifted her to Kondotty Taluk Hospital and later to Manjeri Medical College Hospital,” Farook said.
The councillor said the woman usually catches a bus from the junction to go to the computer centre. From her house, she needs to walk a kilometre to reach Kottukkara junction. She usually takes a shortcut through a paddy field to reach the junction.
She described to the police officers how the attacker looked like. She said she could recognise him if she saw him again. She said the attacker spoke in Malayalam and that she had seen him in the area a few times.
‘Boy sustained injuries from woman’s nails’
“The boy had sustained some cut marks in his hand, neck and lip from the woman’s nails as she resisted the rape. He told his parents that he had sustained the marks after he fell down while trying to escape from a chasing dog. However, during detailed questioning, he confessed that he had committed the crime,” said Malappuram district police chief Sujith Das.
Kondotty Inspector Pramod M C said the boy would be presented before the juvenile justice board. “We will submit a report to the board in which we will mention that the boy had tried to rape and murder the woman,” he said.