A couple was awarded life sentence by a district court on Friday in a case of child sacrifice. According to the prosecution, Khader Yousuf, the one-year and nine-months-old child of Gowhar Batcha and Syrin Fatima of S Alangulam went missing from the Goripalayam Dargah at Madurai on July 2, 2010.
Gowhar Batcha and his mother Sulthan Beevi were staying at the dargah for a night to fulfill a vow, when the baby was kidnapped.
An investigation by the Tallakulam police revealed that the baby was kidnapped and murdered by Abdul Kaffoor (38) and his wife Rameela Beevi (28) of Kayalpattinam in Thoothukudi. The couple, both cooks at a well known dargah near Thirumayam in Pudukkottai district, confessed to police that they ‘sacrificed’ the boy.
Apparently driven by a superstition that sacrificing a child would alleviate their poverty, the couple kidnapped the infant from the dargah and took it to a lodge in Eral, Thoothukudi district. There, they murdered the boy by slitting his throat, prosecution said.
They then ‘packed’ the body, putting the boy’s severed head in a stainless steel vessel and the remaining in another vessel. They took the two vessels containing the body to their hut located at Chairman Nagar in Ervadi, Thoothukudi.
After performing some rituals for the next two days, the couple buried both the vessels in the hut itself, the prosecution said. Later, they took the vessel containing the head to Kallamozhi in Tiruchendur and buried it on the seashore. The case was tried at the 6th Additional District Sessions Court in Madurai.
Judge M Suresh Viswanath pronounced the judgment on Friday.
The Judge sentenced the couple to life under Section 302 (Murder) of IPC. They were also sentenced to life under Section 364 (Kidnapping for murder). This apart, they were sentenced to undergo seven years of rigorous imprisonment under Section 201 (causing disappearance of evidence of offence).
The sentences would have to be served concurrently, the judge said and also slapped a fine of `6,000 on the couple.
Rameela Beevi broke down on hearing the judgment. In a similar case reported in Madurai last year, five-year-old Rajalakshmi, daughter of Thoththan, a Dalit agricultural labourer of Kachaikatti village, was reported missing on January 1, 2011. The following day, her body was found in the cattle shed of a house in the same village.
Later, it was learnt that the child was murdered and her blood was sprinkled at a site where a new college was to be constructed, in Thanichiyam village. Three persons, including DMK district council member Ayub Khan, were arrested by CB-CID police in connection with the case.
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