Kerala rapist-murderer was out on bail in Delhi Pocso case

A senior Delhi police officer aware of the matter said that the accused was arrested after the incident and subsequently bailed out

Asafak Alam, the 29-year-old man accused of raping and murdering a five-year-old girl in Kerala’s Ernakulam district last week was out on bail in a Pocso Act case dating back to 2018 in Delhi, a top police officer said on Tuesday.

A senior Delhi police officer aware of the matter said that the accused was arrested after the incident and subsequently bailed out. (Representational)

“A case was registered against him in 2018 at the Ghazipur police station in Delhi under sections 12 of the Pocso Act and 354, 354A of the IPC. He was an undertrial prisoner in the case, spent a month in jail and later got out on bail. We got the information about that case when we matched fingerprints in the NCRB database. We are investigating if there are more cases registered against him,” Ernakulam Rural SP Vivek Kumar told reporters.

While cases under Pocso are expected to be tried under a year according to the law, reality is different. A study by Vidhi Centre for Legal Policy analysing judicial data across 10 years (2012-21) and 400,000 cases in 28 states and Union Territories shows that the proportion of Pocso cases that takes more than three years to be disposed of is increasing year-on-year, and Delhi has the highest average case length among the states studied (three years and six months). It also found that in a typical Pocso trial, over six months are spent at the evidence stage alone.

A senior Delhi police officer aware of the matter said that the accused was arrested after the incident and subsequently bailed out. “In 2018, the man was arrested on charges of molesting a Class 5 student in Ghazipur. The complainant said he molested her and touched her inappropriately. He was arrested at the time of the incident and was eventually released on bail. The matter is pending trial,” the officer added, on condition of anonymity.

Alam, a native of Bihar, was arrested last week from a suburb near Aluva in connection with the alleged rape and murder of a five-year-old daughter of migrant workers, also from Bihar in an incident that has caused nationwide outrage. He was charged with several counts of aggravated sexual abuse, kidnapping, destruction of evidence, and murder. According to police, the accused kidnapped the Class 1 student from her home and brutalised her before strangling her to death and dumping her body under heaps of waste near a market.

The senior police officer said that the test identification parade of the accused by eyewitnesses was completed on Tuesday and an application seeking his custody for questioning will be filed before a Pocso court. “Investigation is going in the right direction and we will file the charge sheet as soon as possible,” Kumar said.

Meanwhile, health minister Veena George and industries minister P Rajeeve paid a visit to the victim’s home and assured them of speedy justice. The state government has announced a compensation of ₹1 lakh for the affected family.