A court in Kerala's Kottayam on Friday sentenced the main accused in the 25-year-old Vithura sex racket case to 24 years' imprisonment. Pronouncing the quantum of sentence the Additional District Sessions court also slapped a fine of Rs 1,09,000 on the prime accused, Suresh. The court had found him guilty on Thursday. The court also reportedly recommended the Legal Service Authority to give compensation to the girl.
The sentence has been declared 25 years after the crime. The case pertains to the abduction of a girl, hailing from Vithura in Thiruvananthapuram, whom the accused lured with a job offer and then pushed into forced sex work. The girl was raped by several people between November 1995 and May 1996.
The crime came to light when the girl was nabbed by the police along with another accused in the case in July 1996. In a probe, it was revealed that she was abducted and forced into sex work. Suresh was found guilty under Section 344 (wrongful confinement for ten or more days) and Section 372 (selling minor for purposes of prostitution) of the Indian Penal Code and other sections of Immoral Traffic Prevention Act (ITPA).
After the crime was exposed in 1996, Suresh had gone absconding but surrendered before the court in 2014. This was following the acquittal of the other accused in the case. However, he went absconding again during the trial of the case and was nabbed by the Crime Branch from Hyderabad in 2019. Though 36 people were initially accused in the case, they were acquitted by the trial court as the girl couldn’t identify many of them.