Recently, the case of a six-year-old girl’s alleged sexual assault was brought before the Additional Sessions Court I to file charges against Abdul Hameed K (53), her Arabic teacher. The judge publicly voiced his disgust about the Kerala police inquiry.
The charges of aggravated sexual assault against Hameed were dropped in the final report submitted by Inspector Babu Peringeth, the then-investigating officer. Instead, a lesser charge of cruelty under the Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Act was submitted. Allegedly, this was done to dilute the case.
In public, the Additional Sessions Judge remarked, “This is like abusing the system.” He noted that a case filed under the Protection of Children Against Sexual Offences (PoCSO) Act was altered to the Juvenile Justice Act. Following the comments, the accused was not charged on 31 January; the next hearing is set for 23 March.
Hameed is an Arabic instructor at one of the largest government-funded schools in Kasaragod. The case file revealed that the accused’s repeated requests for anticipatory bail were denied—twice by the sessions court and once by the Kerala High Court. Astonishingly, the Kerala police never arrested him, and he continues to teach at the same school.
In January 2017, Hameed filed a motion with the High Court to quash the FIR, but he dropped it in August of the same year. Later, his wife expressed dissatisfaction with the police inquiry in a petition filed in the High Court. It was dropped in February 2018. According to a court source, “the accused was clearly resorting to legal manoeuvring to evade arrest and prolong the investigation.”
The Class I student reported to the police that she had been sexually harassed by the Arabic teacher on multiple occasions between June 2016, when she started the school, and August 2016.
“Our school has a ‘bedak’ (nasty) master. I am tired of going to school,” she said in her statement to the police. Hameed used to hold the child back, and the girl only told the authorities that he checked her notes after touching her improperly.
Despite the girl providing consistent statements to the police twice and the judicial magistrate once, Kerala police dismissed the sexual assault allegations against Hameed. Babu Peringeth is now a Deputy Superintendent of Police (DySP).
Hameed requested anticipatory bail from the court for the fourth time after the serious accusations were diluted, and on 26 April 2018, the Sessions Court granted it. Hameed has wriggled out of jail time and punishment for sexual assault of a six-year-old girl. Will she get justice?
Her mother is angry about how the school handled her daughter’s complaint. The lady told Malayala Manorama, “At night, she would run a high fever, and the mention of school made her shudder in fear.” “I was confused because my kid was bright in studies,” she stated.
As per the girl’s statements to law enforcement, she initially confided in her class teacher (about sexual assault), but her teacher disregarded her concerns. The victim then informed her mother. “I desired to cut off his hands. I brought up the issue first with the police and then with the school,” the mother said.
Hameed continues to ‘teach’ at the same school for over seven years. Now enrolled in class VIII, the victim attends a private school.
Raju K, a sub-inspector from Vidyanagar, investigated the case first. In the first week of September 2016, Raju took statements from the child, her mother, and other teachers at the school. The sub-inspector charged Hameed with three charges of aggravated sexual assault.
The officer accused Hameed of regularly sexually abusing a girl under the age of twelve by a teacher, invoking Sections 9(f), (m), and (l) of the PoCSO Act. The accused faced a five-to-seven-year prison sentence if found guilty.
Inspector Babu Peringeth, the Vidyanagar Station House Officer (SHO), took over the inquiry in December 2016. More than three months had passed after the alleged crime was reported. This was when, allegedly, things started to move in favour of the paedophile Arabic teacher.
That same month, 82 teachers and non-teaching staff members from the school signed a large-scale petition endorsing Abdul Hameed’s integrity and refuting the charge, which they submitted to S Surendran, the then-District Police Chief. Six thousand odd students attend the institution that employs more than 150 teachers.
The school administration, however, asserted that it was not done on their behalf. According to a senior official, the school administration does not become involved or step in when teachers are accused of a crime. “Police complaints are occasionally brought against educators for using physical punishment. They must handle the issues themselves because getting involved could give the wrong impression to the teachers,” he stated.
Does he know the difference or seriousness between corporal punishment and sexual assault of a minor? Shouldn’t the school management have approached the authorities and done what was necessary to help the aggrieved child?
Inspector Peringeth took the teachers’ statements in August 2017. He waited till December 2017, when he took the girl’s statement. “My girl gave the same statement, though they were recorded more than a year apart,” the mother stated.
By then, Hameed has been “legally manoeuvring” his arrest for several months. On 22 June 2017, High Court Judge Sunil Thomas issued the following ruling after turning down Hameed’s request for anticipatory bail: “I feel that the benefit of pre-arrest bail may hamper the proper investigation. Hence, I am not inclined to grant bail. However, no attempt was made to have the teacher arrested.
According to the final report given by the Investigating Officer, Peringeth submitted a final report on 25 March 2018. He concluded that the allegation that the teacher’s touch had sexual intent “did not seem logical”.
“The girl said the teacher touched her from chest to stomach. If there were any sexual intent, he would have gone further,” according to the report found in the Onmanorama investigation.
The report cited another reason, too. “The accused is a primary school teacher who teaches students from Class I to IV. But there are no such complaints from students from higher classes,” it said. This clearly showed that the paedophile was preying on very young girls.
“The teacher behaved with love and care. The teacher’s affectionate touch created a misunderstanding in the student. This behaviour, though without the child’s consent, has no sexual intent. It can be seen only as a non-sexual assault,” it said.
However, Hameed’s actions caused mental harassment to the child, as revealed in the child’s statement. The report recommended that the teacher be charged with Section 75 (cruelty) of the Juvenile Justice Act.
Peringeth’s report also diligently quoted the student as saying that the teacher touched her from above her uniform, not from inside, as she mentioned in her first statement. It also quoted the student as saying she did not report the incident to the class teacher. A counsel with knowledge of the case, however, claimed that the PoCSO Act does not discriminate between sexual contact that occurs above or beneath clothing.
DySP Babu Peringeth, now with the Crime Branch’s Economic Offences Wing, said he vividly remembered the case. “It was all a case of misunderstanding. The teacher appreciated students by patting them on their backs after they did an assignment well. He did that with all students, but that girl (the victim) misunderstood his touch,” the officer told Onmanorama.
The child’s mother was initially taken aback to learn that the matter was still pending in court. “Since the same school still employs the teacher, I assumed the case was over. I recognised that our words were meaningless. The experience of my child is worthless. She remarked, “My child quit attending school out of fear.”
She stated that she “did not want other students to have my child’s experience,” so she made no concessions. “But not even the teachers offered us any assistance. A teacher asked me if my child had ever experienced anything similar. My child was only six years old. What experience was she (the teacher) referring to?” asked the mother.
She claimed that a “powerful person” on the teacher’s side contacted her family to ask them to withdraw from the case. “They approached us with an offer of money if we would drop the matter. We declined. Only the wealthy and powerful have a life in today’s world. It is wise of us to respect our boundaries. However, our respect and honour cannot be purchased,” the mother remarked.
The incident provoked intense criticism against Kerala police and raised questions about the effectiveness of Bharat’s child protection laws. It highlighted systemic issues within the legal process concerning child abuse cases. It remains to be seen how justice will be served and what changes, if any, will be made to prevent such failures. Who is protecting such paedophile Ustads?
