Sexual abuse of 10-year-old: Accused tracked down and arrested in Andhra with the help of a phone call

Kasaragod: Police have registered the arrest of the accused in the sexual assault case of a 10-year-old girl in Kanhangad. 35-year-old PA Salim from Coorg was taken into custody in Andhra Pradesh on Friday.

A call made by the accused to his home proved crucial in their search, police said. Since the suspect did not use his phone often, police had difficulty tracing his whereabouts. However, when they came to know that he was in Andhra Pradesh, a team headed to the state and nabbed him. He was brought back to Kanhangad on Friday evening.

Five days after the crime, police received crucial information about the suspect. The accused had lived in the neighborhood for many years. But on May 15, he suddenly left his house. Police became suspicious about his disappearance. Further investigation confirmed his role in the crime. Police also received video footage showing the suspect’s face.

After the crime, the accused fled to Raichur on the Karnataka-Andhra border. He had previously worked in the area. He hoped to find refuge in a friend’s house. But the police also tracked the woman. Salim called his mother and sisters from the phone of a stranger who was lying unconscious and drunk. With the help of this call, the police were able to trace the location – a place called Adoni in Andhra Pradesh. After a struggle, he was arrested by the police.

According to police, the suspect was married and hailed from Kanhangad and moved here 14 years ago. They said he knew the survivors’ house. “He is a suspect in another POCSO case registered at Melparambu police station two years ago. He molested a 14-year-old girl, who is related to him. In that case, he drove the girl on his scooter to Adoor forest area and raped her. He was remanded for three months in that case. There are also cases of chain snatching against him in Sullia and Coorg stations,” police said.

The case
The 10-year-old girl, who was sleeping in her house, was kidnapped and sexually assaulted on May 15. She was found abandoned in a nearby paddy field in the early hours of Wednesday. The girl was allegedly abducted from a hamlet under the jurisdiction of Hosdurg police station here. According to the girl’s family members, she was abducted from her grandfather’s room after he left the house to milk his cows around 3 am. When he returned after some time, she was missing from the bed. They said the grandfather always went out after closing the door but never locked it. The other family members, including the victim’s father, mother and sister, slept in another room in the same house, they said.

The unfortunate girl, who was abandoned in a paddy field, knocked on the door of a nearby house and called her father from a resident’s phone. Her family quoted the girl as saying that an unknown man took her out of the house and threatened to kill her if she raised an alarm. “Her earrings were missing… She said the culprit spoke Malayalam,” a family member told the media. Based on her complaint, the police registered a case and launched a manhunt to trace the suspect.