The girl’s body was thrown into the well and was found in a decomposed state with her hands tied.

 

 

On January 14, the Ariyalur police found the decomposed body of a minor Dalit girl who was raped and murdered allegedly by her estranged boyfriend and his three friends on December 29, 2016. Police have arrested four people in the case and have remanded them to judicial custody.

 According to the police, the 17-year-old girl was in a relationship with Manikandan, the prime accused in the case, for the last one year. They both developed a relationship when they were working together. The girl was working as a daily wage labourer and Manikandan was working as a mason, police said. He was working as the union secretary of Hindu Munnani and belonged to Vanniyar caste.

Manikandan, sub-inspector of Irumbulikurichi police station, told The News Minute, “On December 26, she was kidnapped by Manikandan and was raped by Manikandan and his three friends, three days later. Then she was thrown into a well in Keezha Maligai village,” he said.

He added that the girl was one-and-a-half months pregnant. “She was pregnant and wanted to get married to Manikandan. But he wanted her to get the child aborted which led him to murder the girl,” he said.

The girl’s body was thrown into the well and was found in a decomposed state with her hands tied.

The three friends of Manikandan have been identified as Thirumurgan, Manivannan and Vetichelvan. Manikandan was arrested on January 14 and confessed to the crime. Police later arrested his friends on January 15, 2017.

A senior investigator from SC commission confirmed that rape and murder were included in the police report. “Police has included rape and murder as the accused confessed to the crime. Political groups had pressured police to question the district secretary of Hindu Munnani, Rajasekar, in this case,” he said.

However, Manikandan said that no evidence was found against Rajasekar, so he was not arrested in the case.

Courtesy: The News Minute

Kari Sidamma, a 60-year-old woman who has been working with the Irular community in Tamil Nadu for the last 20 years, lost an eye and her nose in a wild bear attack when she was eight-years-old. Yeas later, this unfortunate event has come back to haunt her as she's unable to get an Aadhar card because of the same.

For the past one week, Kari Sidamma has been visiting the Chennai corporation office in Adyar. On the first day, when she attempted to procure the Aadhar card, she was asked by the volunteers in the office to come at different timings during the day. But her wait bore no fruit as they finally told her that she'd have to come the next day since they could only accommodate 60 applicants in a day. 

"The next day, I was the 60th person and I had to wait the whole day to apply for my Aadhar card,” she said.

But when her turn came, the staff refused to take her biometrics.

“They told me that they cannot take my biometrics and asked me to come the next day morning,” she said. For the next two days, Kari Sidamma was told by the staff that as she did not have one eye, they could not take her biometrics and give her an Aadhar card.

Fed up of the situation, Kari Sidamma met a senior officer in the corporation office. The officer took down Kari Sidamma’s phone number and told her that they will contact her once they find out how they could provide her an Aadhar card.

But her ordeal did not end there.

On Monday, when Kari Sidamma went back to the corporation office, the officer said that she cannot apply for the Aadhar card as they cannot take her biometrics. “I began shouting at the officer and refused to go anywhere else. I asked her to give me in writing that a person with one eye cannot be given an Aadhar card and that I will go to the court and file a petition. After this, a staff member took the biometrics of one eye and I applied for my Aadhar card,” she said.

After this incident, Kari Sidamma is worried about people like her who have disabilities. 

“What happens to others with disabilities? I can manage as I know the law and I can talk to them. But what about people who do not know how to read and write and do not have ten fingers and two eyes? The government should declare that persons with disability do not need an Aadhar card. It is so shaming to be insulted like this in government offices,” she said.

 Speaking to The News Minute, Deepak Nathan, an activist for persons with disability, said, “There are three accessibility issues that need to be looked at: one is physical access, process access and thirdly, product access. The way the buildings have been put up, how many buildings have ramps? Secondly, how many application forms have big fonts, or braille or people trained in sign language to help a hearing impaired person? Does Aadhar come in braille? How will a visually impaired person figure out that his own card was stolen or if he was given a different one?” he asked. 

This article was first published on The News Minute