Suryanelli Rape Case: A long Walk to Justice. A Tale of Power, Pleasure and Poverty
Special Report by Sujata Davi for Dispatch News Desk
New Delhi: Indian Supreme court verdict in the “Suryanelli Rape” case that was registered in 1996. Victim was a school going girl and she claimed that Congress Minister P. J. Kurien was one of those who raped her for days. However Kurien was exonerated by the police investigators and the courts.
Her story is a story f resolve to get justice because she lost her case in High Court but kept fighting for the justice against powerful people including politicians. She was 16 when she was abducted and then raped in different places in Kerala and Tamil Nadu. “I am happy and relieved that there has been justice and that people have got to know the truth.”, said victim whose name is withheld in this article.
She was raped more than 60 times in hotels, homes and cars. Rapists were not illiterate young people but they were politicians, retired professor, lawyers and businessmen.
In 2005, Kerala High Court acquitted 34 of the 35 suspects but she challenged the verdict in the Supreme Court where she had to wait for eight years for a hearing due to certain reasons best known to Indian Judicial system itself. In January 2013, the Supreme Court ordered a re-trial of the Suryanelli rape case (the woman belongs to Suryanelli in the Idukki district of Kerala).
According to the case, she was kidnapped by a bus conductor on her way to school who handed over her to a lawyer and this lawyer abused her and handed over to her to other people.
A Special Court in Kerala sentenced 35 persons to rigorous imprisonment in 2000. However, in 2005, the State High Court acquitted all of them except one claiming that the girl had consensual sex with all of them. The prosecution appealed the case, and it remained pending in the Supreme Court for eight years.
After the 2012 Delhi bus gang rape case came into the limelight, the case was brought to attention of the Chief Justice of India. Subsequently, the Supreme Court reversed the High Court’s decision in January 2013, describing it as “shocking”.
Her story is a story of any top Indian movie. A 2006 film, Achanurangatha Veedu, was based on the Suryanelli case. Her father was a postmaster when she was abducted and raped. She had been having an affair with Raju since the age of 14, when she was in the ninth grade. Raju was a bus cleaner. Raju gave her threats and blackmailed her and she was forced to elope with Raju. Raju disappeared during the journey, and the girl was followed and befriended by a woman named Usha. Usha offered to help her reach her aunt’s house in Kottayam, but instead brought her to S. S. Dharmarajan, who is accused of being the “kingpin” in the case. Dharmarajan took her to a lodge, where he allegedly raped her. Usha and Dharmarajan then threatened and drugged her, holding her in coercive confinement. The duo took her to several places in Kerala and Tamil Nadu, where several men exploited her sexually over a period of 40 days. When she fell seriously ill, she was given a small amount of money and told to go home on 26 February 1996. She was threatened not to report the incident to anyone. According to the doctors who examined her later, her private parts were “so ruined that a mere touch in these areas would induce blood.”
The girl filed a police complaint on 27 February 1996. The local police allegedly tried to discourage her from pursuing the complaint, and the investigation was delayed. She wrote a letter to chief minister A. K. Antony and accused Congress leader and then Union Minister P. J. Kurien as one of the accused, after seeing his photograph in a newspaper. She claimed that he was one of the men who raped her at a guest house at Kumily. Kurien has always maintained that the complaint was the result of a mistaken identity. Kurien, a UDF candidate from Mavelikara, was exonerated by the police investigators a month before the elections, and went on to win the elections. After this, the case became a political issue in Kerala.
In March 1999, the victim sought inclusion of P. J. Kurien in the list of the accused, in a private complaint filed with the Judicial First Class Magistrate’s court at Peerumedu. Kurien approached the High Court, which dismissed the complaint against him. The Supreme Court of India dismissed a petition filed by the Kerala Government, challenging the High Court’s refusal to charge P. J. Kurien. After Dharmarajan was caught in February 2013, he alleged on the Mathrubhumi TV channel that he himself took Kurien to the guest house in his car. He also alleged that he was forced not to name Kurien in his statements by the principal investigator of the special investigation team. However, 3 months later, he retracted his allegation, saying that he did not know Kurien personally and that he did not own a car.
In 1999, under public pressure, the government set up the State’s first-ever Special Court to try a case of sexual assault. A serious inquiry conducted by a team led by Inspector-General of Police Sibi Mathew bringing the culprits to book.
The trial was conducted in two phases. The first phase tried 40 accused, and the second phase tried the “kingpin” S. S. Dharmarajan, who had been absconding during the first phase. All the accused were charged with “alleged kidnapping, wrongful confinement and procuration of a minor girl, rape and gang rape of the victim”.
On September 6, 2000, the Special Court sentenced 35 persons to rigorous imprisonment for varying terms. The first accused, Raju, and second accused, Usha, were sentenced to 13 years of rigorous imprisonment with fine and an additional jail term of four years on different counts. Four of the accused were let off.
In the second phase, the Court ruled that S. S. Dharmarajan, a lawyer himself, was a “hardened criminal” and his act was “so devilish” that he deserved no leniency. He was given the maximum possible punishment under the Sections 376 (rape) and 376(2)(g) (gang rape) of the Indian Penal Code.
On 20 January 2005, the Kerala High Court acquitted the 34 convicted earlier and found Dharmarajan guilty only of crimes related to the sex trade (procuring and selling a minor for purposes of prostitution). Accordingly, his sentence was reduced to five years, and the fine was reduced from Rs. 50,000 to Rs. 5,000.
The High Court bench comprised Justice K. A. Abdul Gaffoor and Justice Basant. The reasons cited by the High Court included the following:
Absence of evidence that the intercourse was not consensual.
The accused could not be considered guilty of statutory rape, as the victim had just passed the legal age of consent (16 years).
The victim had ample opportunities to escape from her captors or inform others of her plight, which she did not use.
The victim’s statements could not be taken at face value, because she had shown “deviant behaviour” earlier, such as attempting to mortgage her ornaments and spending the money for her hostel fees on “dubious purposes”.
There is evidence that the victim needed money, as she took her mother’s sarees and cash when she left home.
The accused could not be punished for gang rape, since there was no “culpable common intention (among them) to commit rape”
The Court order described the alleged rapes as a “willing journey of a misguided girl”, and claimed that the male accused were “guilty only of the immorality of going to a woman, who they thought was a prostitute”.
Justice R. Basant later defended his decision, stating that “There was ample evidence to show the girl was used for child prostitution, which is not rape”. He also said, “The girl is not normal, she is deviant”.
The victim’s family and the state prosecutor appealed to the Supreme Court in 2005. The case lay pending there for eight years until 2013.
The High Court also acquitted P. J. Kurien on 4 April 2007 for the lack of evidence. Kurien’s lawyer was Arun Jaitley, the Bharatiya Janata Party leader of Opposition in the Rajya Sabha. The CPI(M) leader V. S. Achuthanandan appealed against the High Court decision in the Supreme Court. In November 2007, the Supreme Court Bench led by K. G. Balakrishnan and R. V. Raveendran ruled in favour of Kurien.
The CPI (Marxist) state government headed by E. K. Nayanar provided a job to the victim, as a peon in the Kerala Sales Tax department. In February 2012, during the tenure of the Congress chief minister Oommen Chandy, the police arrested her in connection with an alleged financial irregularity case. She was accused of engaging in multiple financial irregularities worth Rs 226,000 while working in the Sales Tax Department in Changanassery in 2010. Many activists complained that she was being persecuted for refusing to give up her fight against well-connected men. After a suspension of 8 months, she was reinstated after the media picked up the issue. She was given a “punishment” transfer to Kottayam, where she is now employed.
After the 2012 Delhi bus gang rape case was highlighted in the media, the pending status of the case was brought to notice of the Chief Justice of India Altamas Kabir by the Janadhipatya Mahila Association. Subsequently, the Supreme Court of India decided to hear the case on January 31, 2013. On the first day itself, a bench headed by A. K. Patnaik and Gyan Sudha Misra set aside the Kerala High Court’s order acquitting 34 accused. The bench sent the case back to the High Court for taking a fresh look at it.
The Supreme Court was highly critical of the High Court decision, and described it as “shocking”. It said that the statement that victim was a willing partner might be true “for one accused (Raju, her lover) but not for all the others”.
Dharmarajan, who had been absconding since 2002, was arrested in Karnataka in 2013.
The victim’s family has faced social ostracism and verbal harassment. In February 2013, the Congress MP K. Sudhakaran stated that she had moved around “as a prostitute, making money and accepting gifts”. As of 2013, the victim’s father has undergone bypass surgery and is chronically ill.
In February 2013, the victim filed a fresh case against P. J. Kurien and the former Additional Director General of Police Siby Mathew (who allegedly forced Dharmarajan not to name Kurien), in the High Court. Her 71-year old mother wrote to the Congress president Sonia Gandhi, alleging that Kurien “exerted undue influence over the investigating officials in order to escape from the law.”
In April 2014, the 24 accused, who had been acquitted earlier, were held guilty of gang rape by Kerala high court.
