Child Raped in Emmanuel Hosanna Trust Hostel Cumbum

30-year-old man held for raping minor in Cumbum

TIMES NEWS NETWORK Madurai:

A fourteen-yearold girl was allegedly raped by a 30-year-old man when she visited her sister in a hostel in Cumbum in Theni district in south Tamil Nadu.The man was picked up on Sunday by the Kumili police and later booked on charges of rape.

Kumili circle inspector Anil Srinivas told TOI that the man had repeatedly raped the girl and was booked under IPC Section 376 (rape).

The girl,hailing from Kumili near Thekkady in Idukki district in Kerala,had completed her ninth standard and had gone in April first week to visit her elder sister,staying in a private hostel,Emmanuel Hosanna Trust,near Cumbum.The hostel is run by Joel Durai,who hails from Nagercoil,and houses about 40 children,both boys and girls,most of them teenagers. Durais son,Richard Ebenezer (30),a divorcee who has a six-year-old daughter,had allegedly sexually abused the girl about eight times,taking her with him to places in Theni,Cumbum,Tirunelveli and Tenkasi.

According to the girls father who had lodged a complaint with the Kumili police,she was threatened with dire consequences if she revealed his misdeeds or failed to cooperate with him.The man had allegedly warned her that he would murder her sister if she revealed anything to her family members.

The man then forced the girl to go with him to Tirunelveli on May 6,following which her father lodged a complaint with the police.On information that he had come back to Cumbum on Sunday,a team of the Kerala police picked him up from a friends house in Cumbum.He would produced before the magistrate,Srinivas said.