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Fifteen years after the death of a brutally tortured and beaten seven-year-old girl, a special court in Ernakulam acquitted all three accused, holding that the prosecution failed to prove the guilt of the couple, who employed her, beyond reasonable doubt. Judge Mahesh G of the Special court for the trial of POCSO cases, Muvattupuzha, acquitted all the accused in an order issued on May 29.
Dhanalekshmi, a child from the Irula tribal community in Tamil Nadu, died on February 24, 2011 after being admitted to the hospital in Aluva. She had been found unconscious at the house of a couple, where she had been living. Her autopsy reports documented around 57 injuries on her body and concluded that the wounds were "non-accidental in nature" and consistent with "violent infliction". The forensic expert who conducted the autopsy testified that cigarette burns, beatings with sticks and a fork-like object could have caused some injuries. The child died of pneumonia and septicaemia.
Yet the court found that the prosecution had failed to establish criminal liability against the accused, a couple in whose house the child was staying and the relative of the girl, who had brought her from Tamil Nadu to Kerala after promising her parents a better life for the girl.
The case first came to light on February 22, 2011, when a government veterinary doctor Dr Jerin Francis, visited the house to treat the family's Rottweiler dogs. Inside, he found the seven-year-old lying unconscious on the floor with infected wounds and a foul smell emanating from her body. He later testified that he immediately advised the family to take her to the hospital. Two days later, Dhanalekshmi was dead.
The three accused in the case were Sindhu, her lawyer husband Jose Kurien, and Nagappan, a relative of Dhanalekshmi's family from Tamil Nadu. According to the prosecution, Nagappan brought the seven-year-old to Kerala. The prosecution alleged that he then handed over the child to Sindhu and Jose Kurien, in whose Aluva home she was staying when she fell critically ill. It was in this house that Dhanalekshmi was found unconscious with multiple injuries on her body before being taken to the hospital, where she later died.
The judgement is striking not only because it disputes the child's suffering but also because it concludes that the prosecution could not prove who caused it. That distinction between evidence of abuse and proof of guilt runs through the court's reasoning. It lies at the centre of a case that has raised difficult questions about investigation, witness credibility and justice for a child who never got the chance to tell her story.
The prosecution is expected to soon move an appeal in the High Court.
Who was Dhanalekshmi?
Dhanalekshmi was the youngest of five children born to an Irula tribal family in Karuveppilankurichi village in Tamil Nadu's Virudhachalam taluk. Her parents, daily wage labourers working in sugarcane fields, believed they were securing a better future for their seven-year-old daughter when they entrusted her to Nagappan, a relative who promised to educate and care for her in Kerala. The child left her village shortly after Pongal festival in January 2011.
According to the prosecution, she was sold by Nagappan to the accused couple and thereafter remained with them. The prosecution alleges that during the approximately one month she stayed there; she was subjected to severe physical abuse. Barely six weeks after she left home, she was dead.
“After being informed of their daughter's death, Dhanalekshmi's parents travelled from Tamil Nadu to Kerala in search of her. Unfamiliar with the place and unable to locate the hospital, they returned home in despair. They later made a second trip with the help of a relative who guided them to the hospital, where they finally found their daughter's body. Too poor to transport her remains back to their village, they requested the police to conduct her cremation in Kerala and returned home grieving, still without answers about how their seven-year-old had died,” Jamuna, the state’s prosecutor, told TNM.
A person familiar with the defence strategy told TNM that the advocate for the couple proposed an alternate theory for her grievous injuries. They claimed that Dhanalekshmi had been staying at another house before she was brought to Sindhu's residence and argued that she was already injured before she arrived at the couple’s place. "She had been in that house for only about a month. The injuries could have been older, and it is possible that those injuries later led to sepsis," the source claimed.
What postmortem said
The postmortem examination documented around 57 injuries on Dhanalekshmi's body, including wounds, scalds, burns, cuts and scars. While some injuries had healed, others were still healing, and several wounds were infected.
The forensic surgeon who conducted the autopsy concluded that the child died of pneumonia and septicaemia. In his report, he certified that the pattern of injuries was "non-accidental in nature" and consistent with a history of "violent infliction". During his testimony, the doctor stated that five of the injuries could have been caused by burns from a lit cigarette, six appeared to be blunt-force injuries consistent with beatings using wooden sticks, and four could have been inflicted using a fork-like object. He further testified that injuries found on the child's chest, back and armpits were highly unlikely to have resulted from normal play and clarified that the term "violent infliction" in his report was used to indicate that the injuries had not occurred accidentally.
The prosecution's case depended heavily on witness statements by neighbours and the veterinary doctor. Several neighbours claimed they had seen the child doing domestic work and being ill-treated. The veterinary doctor said he had earlier seen the child being beaten and had warned the accused against it.
But the court systematically dismantled much of this testimony.
Neighbours Manikyan and Sadasivan Pillai admitted to having long-standing disputes with Jose Kurian's family dating back to 2006, and it also emerged that Manikyan had previously been prosecuted for causing injury to Jose Kurian.
One neighbour was labelled a "planted witness". The court noted previous disputes between him and the accused and found inconsistencies in his account. Other witnesses also saw parts of their testimony rejected after contradictions emerged during cross-examination.
The court repeatedly returned to a question that runs through the judgement: if these witnesses had really seen a young child being regularly assaulted, why did none of them approach the police, Childline or any authority?
"In spite of such hostility, none of them had reported to any authorities, the police or Childline, that A1 and A2 were assaulting such a young child and subjecting her to any cruelty," the court noted on their testimony.
That question became central to the court's assessment of the credibility of these testimonies.
The same reasoning was applied to the veterinary doctor. The court observed that although he claimed to have witnessed the child being beaten, he never reported the matter to authorities and offered no satisfactory explanation for not doing so.
In criminal trials, suspicion is not enough. The court held that testimony it considered unreliable could not be the basis for a conviction.
Advocate Sarath KP, a criminal lawyer practising in the Kerala High Court and familiar with the judgement, said the acquittal was largely the result of weaknesses in the prosecution's case. "The principal reasons for the acquittal were defects in the investigation and pre-trial stages, the court's decision to disbelieve the testimony of certain witnesses and the prosecution's failure to establish a complete chain of circumstances," he said.
According to Sarath, the court's assessment of witness credibility is often a subjective exercise.
A significant part of the defence case centred on the claim that Dhanalekshmi had not come to Kerala alone. According to the accused, she had arrived along with a woman named Sharadammal, who was later employed in their household and who was primarily responsible for the child's care and supervision. The defence argued that after Dhanalekshmi's death, this woman disappeared and returned to Tamil Nadu and that the injuries found on the child could have been inflicted by her.
The court noted that investigators had not adequately examined this claim. It pointed out that no meaningful inquiry was conducted to establish the identity, presence or role of the alleged domestic worker. The court also took note of the testimony of the veterinary doctor, a prosecution witness, who stated that he had seen a woman aged around 50 years in the house when he visited on the day Dhanalekshmi was found unconscious.
However, special public prosecutor Jamuna told TNM that no such woman existed. "There was no such lady named Sharadammal. The veterinary doctor had seen Shaila, an agent who helped Nagappan sell the child. Only this child was in the house and forced to do the domestic work. Sharadammal was created just to claim that the couple was not involved with child labour or slavery," she said.
Nevertheless, the court found that the defence contention could not be ignored, particularly because the police had failed to investigate it. This, along with the contradictions that emerged in the testimony of several prosecution witnesses during cross-examination, contributed to the court extending the benefit of doubt to the accused. "The benefit of doubt also shall go in their favour," the judgement said.
Some of the most controversial portions of the judgement concern alternative explanations for the injuries.
The court also accepted the defence’s contention that certain linear scars could theoretically have been caused by contact with Rottweiler dogs but did not question why a seven-year-old child was not protected by the couple from the household dogs. It also agreed to the possibility of abrasions caused by sugarcane leaves, given the child's background in an agricultural family.
Read in isolation, such observations may appear startling when placed alongside medical findings describing dozens of injuries and violent infliction.
The court also expressed doubt over the precise circumstances that led to the child's death, despite the postmortem report identifying the cause of death as pneumonia and septicaemia. In the judgement, the court observed, "The actual cause for the unconsciousness of the child, whether it was on account of diarrhoea or such other food infection or whether it was due to the infectious injuries, is also actually not known."
The observation formed part of the court's broader conclusion that the prosecution had failed to establish an unbroken chain of evidence linking the injuries to the accused.
The court also dismissed the charges under the SC/ST (Prevention of Atrocities) Act. It held that the prosecution had failed to establish that the alleged offences were committed because of Dhanalekshmi's caste identity. "It is not proved that the criminal offences have any relation to the caste or community of the victim. In order to attract the provisions of Section 3 of the Act, it is necessary to establish that the offences were committed solely due to the victim's caste status," the court said.
Perhaps the sharpest criticism in the judgement was directed not at the witnesses but at the investigation itself.
The court pointed out multiple investigative failures in the case which, with the exception of the post-mortem report, was largely circumstantial.
It criticised the police for not adequately probing the alleged presence of the unidentified woman. It noted the lack of evidence establishing that the third accused had sold the child or procured her for bonded labour.
It also pointed out that one of the major charges was framed under a sub clause of Section 370 of the IPC that did not exist in 2011, when the alleged offences occurred.
These observations suggest a court unconvinced not only by the evidence presented but also by how the case was built.
Jamuna acknowledged that the investigation had shortcomings but maintained that the evidence on record was sufficient to warrant a conviction. "I agree that there were flaws in the investigation. But there were several facts and circumstances that could have led to a conviction. The court chose not to place reliance on the prosecution's case and instead accepted the defence version on almost every point. I would describe the judgement as something that was cobbled together," she said.
The acquittal closes the criminal case against the accused.
“It does not answer the question that has lingered since February 2011. A seven-year-old girl was brutally tortured and killed. She is a tribal girl from one of the most marginalised communities. Where is the justice here?” Benoy Peter, cofounder of Centre for Migration and Inclusive Development (CMID), an independent non-profit that promotes social inclusion of migrants in India, said. “She had dozens of injuries on her body. Medical experts described those injuries as non-accidental and consistent with violent infliction. How can this be explained?"
Benoy has demanded that the government extend full support to challenge the acquittal before a higher court and, if necessary, order a fresh investigation into the case. He argued that the circumstances surrounding Dhanalekshmi's death warrant a thorough re-examination and that the family deserves another opportunity to seek justice.
Advocate Sarath said the judgement left open an important question: who bore responsibility for the abuse that the child undoubtedly suffered while she was in the accused's house.
"Undoubtedly, the victim was subjected to severe cruelty, and the trial court itself has acknowledged that. However, due to deficiencies in the investigation and other shortcomings in the prosecution case, the evidence was not accepted by the court. The larger question is whether the accused can be completely absolved of responsibility for what happened to the child while she was under their care. That is an aspect that could provide grounds for an appeal," he said.