The Thiruvananthapuram City police cracked the abduction case of a two-year-old daughter of a nomadic couple from near Kochuveli two weeks ago to arrest a habitual offender from Kollam on Sunday.
The accused, Hassankutty alias Kabeer, was apprehended from Chinnakkada by the special investigation team led by Deputy Commissioner of Police (Law and Order) P. Nidhinraj that has been in pursuit of the accused since February 19. The child had been found abandoned in an unused drain near the Kochuveli railway station, nearly 19 hours after she was reported to have gone missing.
District Police Chief (Thiruvananthapuram City) C.H. Nagaraju, who addressed a press conference, identified the accused as a “wanderer” with a mysterious background. While he has been recorded as a native of Edava in Ayiroor in a case file, the police have been unable to establish his link with the locality. Besides, the unlettered accused has claimed to have been adopted by a family from Gujarat in his childhood. He is known to have been doing odd jobs to earn a living.
Piecing together clues in the abduction case, the police suspected Hassankutty to have kidnapped the child between 11 p.m. and 1 a.m. when the family was asleep, shortly after he arrived at the Pettah railway station. He then allegedly took the child to a nearby railway track where he purportedly attempted to sexually assault her. However, the child lost consciousness after he covered her mouth. This prompted the panicked perpetrator to abandon her in the drain before fleeing the area.
The accused claimed to have escaped in a KSRTC bus from Thampanoor and has travelled to several places including Kollam, Aluva and Palani, Mr. Nagaraju said.
He is known to be involved in eight cases including one relating to child abuse registered in Ayiroor police station in 2022. The other cases were registered in Kallambalam, Chirayinkeezhu, Pangode and Alappuzha South police stations. He had recently completed a jail term on January 12.
The police have received information on certain unreported cases of child abuse including a recent one in Kollam.
The investigation team, which examined over a hundred CCTV footages recovered from various parts of the district and beyond, narrowed down its search by mapping the accused’s movements and obtaining his criminal antecedents from the iCoPS policing system of Kerala Police. The circulation of CCTV visuals and screen grabs of the suspect among prison officers had provided a vital breakthrough with the police receiving leads regarding his identity.
The probe had taken a curious turn after the police collected samples from the child and her parents for a DNA test to confirm her parentage. The results of the scientific examination are expected on Monday.
