People's Democracy

KERALA NEWSLETTER

Kerala Minister Slams Woman Legislator

N S Sajith

WHILE the whole country is busy waging a vigorous war against anti-women atrocities, the home minister of Kerala has reserved his dubious place in history by making a derogatory comment against a woman legislator. The rude statement made by the minister, Thiruvanchoor Radhakrishnan, against K K Lathika, CPI(M) MLA from Kuttiady, has led to eruption of widespread protest in the state. Lathika is the wife of P Mohanan, member of the CPI(M)’s Kozhikode district secretariat, who is languishing in jail after being implicated in the T P Chandrashekharan murder case 

The home minister made the derogatory and anti-women comment while speaking in a meeting of the gazetted officers’ organisation affiliated to the Congress.

GOVT ADMITS 371 WOMEN

WERE KILLED IN 11 MONTHS

ON December 17, 2012, the government of the Congress led United Democratic Front (UDF) indirectly admitted in the Kerala legislative assembly that it had miserably failed to check the violence against women in Kerala. This failure came out from a report giving the statistics on various categories of crimes in Kerala.

In a written answer to the query submitted by M Chandran of the CPI(M), Thiruvanchoor Radhakrishnan, the minister for home affairs, told that 371 women had been killed in the state within a short span of 11 months. He also said that 1661 rape cases have been reported in last 20 months. Every police station in the state registers on an average 20 cases of crime on any single day.

One may note that recent months have witnessed a sharp rise in incidents of violence against women and girl children in Kerala. In a shocking incident only two days before the home minister admitted his failure in the assembly, a police circle inspector deputed with the state women commission was caught red-handed while trying to molest a woman. After the latter lodged a complaint with the commission, the said police officer was suspended from service and a case registered against him.

The media have also exposed some incidents related to activities of those running sex rackets. In most of these cases, the culprits have relations with one or another constituent of the ruling United Democratic Front. Crimes against women inside running trains have also been on an increase in recent days.

The recent spate of atrocities against women in the state appears all the more heinous when one reads the latest report of the police saying that 210 child rape cases were reported till June 2012. In this period, the number of crime against children stood at a high 625; this included 18 murders and 60 kidnappings. The figure indicates a shocking increase as 423 child rape cases were reported in 2011 and 208 cases in 2010. In 2008 and 2009, the rape cases reported were 215 and 235 respectively.

PATIENT FROM AP 

FOUND DEAD

On December 14, 2012, within four months after the dubious murder of Satnam Singh, a devotee of Amritanandamayi, the Government Mental Health Centre in Peroorkada witnessed the death of yet another outsider. On the day, a mentally retarded patient from Andhra Pradesh, Venkiteshappa (62), was found dead in this mental hospital. Details of this patient are yet to come out. The dead body was being kept in the mortuary of the Medical College, Thiruvananthapuram.

[Satnam Singh, from Bihar, was killed in the same hospital on August 6 this year.]

According to the report submitted by hospital authorities to the district judge and chief judicial magistrate and to the city police chief, the patient might have been strangulated to death by other inmates. The chief judicial magistrate sought a detailed report on the incident, whereupon the superintendent of the hospital said that a detailed report would be filed as soon as the autopsy report was received.

The hospital authorities also claimed that Suresh Babu, a patient from Thiruvananthapuram, had confessed to the doctors that he had killed Venkiteshappa. The police had taken the custody of Venkateshappa on November 30 as he was affronted in a public place. He was kept in a cell which was already occupied by another insane patient. No action had been taken against those responsible for the murder even after ten days of the incident.