Kerala cricket coach ‘sexually abused minor girls for years and took nude photos under the pretext of a fitness check’; parents approach Supreme Court | Thiruvananthapuram News

On Friday, the KCA recommended the revocation of its certification by the BCCI-affiliated National Cricket Academy and instructed cricket associations across India not to employ him as a coach.

In their petition before the Kerala HC, the parents alleged that others were also involved and that “mafia involvement is suspected”.

“They took videos and photographs of the children and uploaded them on various websites for commercial purposes as there are certain websites that promote such illegal acts against the children. It is alleged that the accused and his associates took nude photographs of the survivors with the criminal intent to abuse them in future,” the petition states.

The mother of a girl whose complaint led to her arrest under the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act (POCSO) also described her daughter’s ordeal in 2019.

“She wanted to quit cricket training and move to Bengaluru,” she wrote in the petition. “She had then shown abnormal behaviour but the family did not understand the problem. Recently, she got scared when she saw the coach again in Thiruvananthapuram. The girl then narrated what had happened in 2019, which led to the registration of the case.”

Following his arrest on June 12, other girls and their parents came forward with similar allegations of sexual harassment during training sessions in 2020 and 2021. The coach is said to have taken nude photos of the girls under the pretext of checking their physical fitness.

KCA president Jayesh George claimed the association never protected the coach and the complaint only came to light last month.

“He had a similar case in 2022. At that time, the association had stopped him from being a coach. But a section of students and their parents wanted him to be a coach again, saying the complaint arose in the context of selection issues. But the association was not ready to take him back,” he said, adding that a court eventually closed the case after students and parents supported the accused.

However, he admitted that the KCA had made a mistake and said that they should have kept the coach away from the club even after the acquittal. “We should have carried out an internal investigation at the time,” he said.

Another parent told The Indian Express that the coach had sexually harassed several girls over the years.

“After he got out of the earlier POCSO case, he showed the same tendencies. He took girls to a tournament in Tamil Nadu without any female staff or coaches. Some parents have withdrawn their daughters (from coaching) in the last few months after becoming suspicious about his behaviour,” he alleged.