Transgender sentenced to death for raping, killing 3-month-old girl in SoBo
By Gajanan Khergamker
The 24-year-old was convicted of charges such as rape, murder, kidnapping, and destruction of evidence under the Indian Penal Code and the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act, while another accused was cleared of the same charges due to insufficient evidence. The court stated that the crime was premeditated and would “horrify every parent of a girl child, especially in a poor area”.
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| The infant's mother flanked by her sister-in-law and mother-in-law all set on obtaining justice |
The court relied on circumstantial evidence, as there were no eyewitnesses to the abduction of the child from her home at night on July 8, 2021. The evidence included the statements of the family and two neighbours, who said they saw the accused carrying a “bundle” on his shoulder around 2 am.
The child’s grandmother said that on the day of the incident, the accused came to their home asking for gifts, such as a saree, coconut and Rs 1,100, to bless the baby. The grandmother said that she could not give any money because of the Covid-19 lockdown. The grandmother said that the accused then threatened her that he would do something “that would make him famous” in the next 5-6 days.
(Watch the news report here)
“The accused had the intention to create terror in the area and become notorious by his name so that no one would dare to deny him gifts. The victim, who was totally defenseless, had severe genital injuries caused by penetration. The act of the accused showed extreme cruelty,” said Aditee Uday Kadam, the special POCSO judge.
The special public prosecutor submitted that on July 8, 2021, the baby was put to bed by her mother around 9.30 pm. The family left the door of their home open because of the heat in the slum where they lived. The mother woke up around 1 am and fed the baby. Around 3 am, she woke up again and found the child missing. The family searched the area and then informed the police.
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| The infant’s grandmother Indu Chitakote was inconsolable as she sat with family members and friends collectively enraged on the day of the incident |
The next day, the family named the accused in their additional statement, recounting the incident from the previous day, including the “threat”. The police interrogated the accused and claimed that he took them to the spot in the evening of 9 July 2021, where the body of the baby was found. The police claimed that medical evidence showed that the child was raped, then thrown in a swampy area, to destroy evidence, where she drowned and died.
The court said that the case clearly fell in the category of “rarest of rare” and that there was no reason to show mercy. “The accused murdered an infant who was only three months old and had no enmity with him or his family. There was no provocation from their side to incite the accused to kill the infant and to commit such a heinous offence with her…,” the court said.
“We will make sure he is hanged till death,” says the infant’s grandmother Indu Chitakote echoing the sentiments of her entire family. husband Chandrakant Chitakote, son Sachin Chitakote and daughter-in-law Jyoshna and daughter Sarika who collectively heaved a sigh of relief with the judgement in their favour but are all ready to fight it out should the legal battle continue.
Cut to 9 July 2021 as published in The Draft Colaba
They say, nothing can be more painful for a parent than the death of one’s child. As for a newborn
infant killed, it's a pain that transgresses to a society that will collectively have to pay the price. A three-month-old's kidnapping and murder, allegedly committed by a transgender irate for being refused bakshish, sent shockwaves across South Mumbai's Colaba-Cuffe Parade areas.
That the offence took place, like a few others in the past, in alarming proximity to the Cuffe Parade Police Station was shocking. The act was an inevitability, according to locals, who claim that the mushrooming of miscreants, drug addicts and felons in the zone must be addressed by the local police. The onus lies on the police who need to act swiftly to prevent crime rather than solve it.
The heat here is unbearable. And for good reason too. The sea lies barely a stone's throw away from the Cuffe Parade slum in South Mumbai. The humidity during the monsoons is unbearable for inmates of the slum known to keep the doors of their shanties open for most of the time.
For a diabetic and hypertensive 60-year-old grandmother it was only natural to wake up,
several times at night.
On the night of 8 July 2021, with ventilation impaired, she found it difficult to breathe freely and woke up covered in a sheen of sweat at around one am. Like most others in the slum, she unlatched the door of her house that lay at the end of a passage interlined with others and swung it open. Most households would leave the doors to their homes open during hot days jarring them only to keep stray cats at bay.
She then turned her three-month-old granddaughter, the apple of her eyes, lying on her stomach, to her back, covered her with a sheet and placed pillows on her side so she didn't roll back. Alongside slept six-year-old grandson and husband, dead as a log after a long day's work as a mason. Her son, jobless since the lockdown, and daughter-in-law slept a few feet away. The grandmother soon drifted off to sleep.
A little while later, she woke up startled with the clanging sound of a steel plate falling on the ground on being pushed off a ledge by a stray cat. The others too woke up abruptly. And then, her grandson exclaimed that his sister was missing! Within moments, the entire family was up on their feet and rushed to look for the child who they were certain had been taken away by someone who had managed to access the open door.
Years of political campaigning and social work later, the matriarch had generated immense goodwill in the zone and residents from within the vicinity, even beyond rushed in to help in whatever way possible. The father rushed out of the home to look for his daughter, his wife was joined in by immediate neighbours screaming out for the child in the quiet of the night. And, within moments, the entire lane was awake. The local police station at Cuffe Parade was apprised of the situation.
A WhatsApp message with the angelic infant's image in a tiny white frock requesting 'any information' to help 'save a life' to contact the Cuffe Parade police began to make the rounds at night itself. By six am on 9 July 2021, word spread like fire in slums in the vicinity.
And then, while rueing her decision to open the door at night before sleeping, the grandmother suddenly remembered something that would change everything. A saree-clad local transgender aka kinnar swayed along the passage leading to a house before being stopped at the doorstep by the activist grandmother. The transgender ducked her head into the house for cover from the heavy rain.
And, as usual, she demanded money and a saree from her because "ladke ko ladki hui." Exasperated with her incessant demands, that had grown by the day, the matriarch scolded her and told her that she would give her a saree but wouldn't give her any money then. She was ready to pay her Rs 200 and even consented to give her Rs 1,100 at a ceremony to be held when her eldest daughter, who had delivered a child four months back, arrived in Diwali. The kinnar refused the offer and left her home angrily.
Scolding the kinnar came naturally to her. On her getting upset, the matriarch didn't give much thought. The kinnar was like that only. Dressed in saree with kohl-clad eyes, she would stop by her house, like others, whenever the door was left ajar to ask for money. She lived in the vicinity and was, since birth, known to everyone in the slum.
Fired with a passion to clean up the entire zone comprising Ambedkar Nagar, a social activist had taken up cudgels to tackle social ills like alcoholism, drug abuse and domestic violence. She would be called in by elderly parents, sometimes children to stop abusive men from inflicting physical injuries on the women at home. This, often, led her to knock on several doors at night and help save hapless wives and young mothers from the rage of drunken husbands or sons.
This time around, the screams that drew her attention were from her next-door home where she would have to regularly intervene to stop a man who physically abused his wife. The family, lived in a room that stood adjacent to the matriarch's own home and any cacophony that emanated from their room would swiftly reach her ears.
They were her tenants and she, prompt as ever to intervene, would rush off to the wife's aid even as her mother, and children - a four-year-old boy and his sister stood watching the drama unfold. The regular occurrence had become an integral part of her social work life for the five years this family stayed as tenants.
Over the two decades, the four-year-old boy who had grown up watching the violence day after day
at home, went on to become a kinnar. Following the grandmother's statement about the kinnar having 'fought' with her over the bakshish, she was demanding, along with corroborating versions from locals in the slum, the Cuffe Parade Police sleuths took the transgender into custody and started questioning him.
Reportedly, after a while of interrogation, the kinnar 'broke down' and confessed that angered at the refusal to pay him the 'blessing' money he 'kidnapped' the infant after entering the house when the door was ajar while all were asleep in the home at night.
A surging crowd of slum residents grew steadily even as the Cuffe Parade Police say they interrogated the two accused separately before 'taking' them to the 'site' of crime and 'rushed them back to the safety of the police station.’ The anger among the people, mostly young mothers incensed with the gruesome nature of the murder, was palpable. It was a matter of time before the situation could spiral out of control and the mob turn barbarous and lynch the accused to death.
The worst fear of a child's parents remains the prospect of sexual assault and the physical pain that may be inflicted on their tender one. And then, there's the hearsay that follows any incident of this nature. That spreads like wildfire, even among the ‘educated’ and ‘informed,’ and causes more damage than the actual incident, is sadly lost here.
So, where the infant was concerned, the same fears surfaced. While a few residents ‘vouched’ for a ‘fact’ that the child’s body had bled constantly from her private parts indicating ‘definite rape’, others said that the body had been coated with vermillion and ashes as she was a victim of a 'human sacrifice' conducted on Ashadha Amavasya that coincided with the date of the offence - 9 July 2021.
Videos shot on mobile phones by a few locals of the combing crew emerging from the marshy waters with the infant's lifeless body made the viral rounds as usual. And, conjectures flew about widely, as usual.
A stream of incensed family members, residents, neighbours and friends of the family continued to flow steadily into the matriarch's small house. Her married daughter who lives at nearby Machchimar Nagar sat speechless in a corner. The turn of events had stunned her into silence. The grandmother sat against a wall unable to stop her tears.
Deafening wails of grief, anger and consternation filled the air as a group of women - mostly Banjara fish-cleaners, domestic workers and house cooks - sat on the floor in support of the matriarch in the time of her grief. The infant's grandfather stood outside the house and refused to enter. Each time he even looked at the house, he would burst into tears. It reminded him of the cherubic infant. He had looked for his favourite granddaughter all over the slum, all night long, from the time she was found missing at two
am till her lifeless body was recovered at noon, he was optimistic of finding her.
His voice had gone hoarse from screaming out her name over and over, in the dark of the night, calling out to friends and neighbours to look out for a wailing infant who could have been left abandoned in the open by the kidnapper. And then, he entered the house unable to stop the tears from flowing. Incoherent in his anger, the grandfather would suddenly break into a string of abuses. His wife sat distraught even as the women who had gathered raised their calls for justice. "Humein de do...hum iska insaaf karenge," they said in unison, baying for his blood.
And then, the mother arrived from J.J. Hospital where the child's post-mortem had taken place and
was led by a few to a corner. Just as she sat down, she banged her head on a wall in abject despair
and let out an ear-splitting wail as she cried out for her daughter. Her sister-in-law, who had sat
quietly till then simply couldn't stop herself watching her cry. She broke down inconsolably on her
part.
The infant's six-year-old brother too burst out into tears watching his mother cry. An entire family had been destroyed. For no fault of theirs. What’s worse is it was avoidable. "I demand that the police first check if he is a kinnar or not," said a septuagenarian relative Usha Waghmare enraged at the occurrence. "A lot of boys and girls in the area now fake their identity as kinnar to get money from people. There are many addicts here ," she says.
"Some 10-12 people who are not kinnar are known to harass the locals here. Ghar mein ghuskar maarte hai. Hum log morcha nikalenge…chodenge nahin," she quips, insisting that the police are complicit in their inaction.
A motley crowd of residents had begun to trickle in to witness the cremation of the three-month-old infant. The local police had prevented the family from getting her body home at the slum before the cremation leaving them with no option but to conduct it directly at the crematorium.
Meanwhile, WhatsApp groups of residents in the zone allege private hospitals harbour a nexus with eunuchs and transgenders to 'tip them off' whenever a child is born so that money can be extracted and then, shared. And then, amplifying the allegation to ‘it is a commonplace occurrence in India.’ This, among several conspiracy theories, presupposes everything but the obvious. The threat posed by drunkards, drug addicts and miscreants in Colaba's slums is formidable. The role played by the police, the Cuffe Parade Police in this case, includes prevention of crime and that remains unfulfilled.
The transgender, for now, with an accomplice has been taken into police custody and booked under Section 302 (Punishment for Murder), Section 201 (Tampering with Evidence), Section 363 (Kidnapping) and Section 34 (Common Intent) of the Indian Penal Code. The lives of thousands of residents in the most crowded zones of Mumbai, her slums, remain at risk.
And, at a higher risk are their young who remain vulnerable to attacks by felons and potential troublemakers who blend in with the rest.
The transgender, for now, with an accomplice has been taken into police custody and booked under Section 302 (Punishment for Murder), Section 201 (Tampering with Evidence), Section 363 (Kidnapping) and Section 34 (Common Intent) of the Indian Penal Code. The lives of thousands of residents in the most crowded zones of Mumbai, her slums, remain at risk.
And, at a higher risk are their young who remain vulnerable to attacks by felons and potential troublemakers who blend in with the rest.
(Watch the news report here)
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