Chennai: Police on Thursday arrested an advocate on charges of murdering his four-year-old adopted daughter, who was earlier suspected to have died after slipping in the bathroom a year ago.
The advocate, Gerald, was arrested by Chintadripet police after viscera tests revealed that the child had died of inflicted injuries.
According to police, Gerald and his wife, Sangeetha, a professor at Government Law College had adopted a 3-year-old girl child from a home in Madurai in June 2016. A month later, on July 7, Gerald admitted the girl to a private hospital in Nungambakkam.
“He had told the hospital authorities that the girl slipped and fell in the bathroom,” a police officer said. The child was subsequently shifted to the Children’s hospital in Egmore where she died without responding to treatment. Police had then filed a case of suspicious death and let it off.
According to police, a detailed medical report a month later had indicated that there were several injuries on the child’s body, most probably inflicted by another person. However, the probe never took off.
Meanwhile, recently the case gained attention among officials and a probe was initiated. Investigations with the family members of the lawyer suggested that there are chances that he could have killed the child as he was unhappy over the child having a speech disorder, police said.
Police said that on the day of the incident, the advocate was alone at his home while his wife was away at Madipakkam to visit her mother.
Chintadripet Police altered the case to section 302 IPC (murder) and arrested the advocate. He was produced before a magistrate in Egmore and remanded to judicial custody. Further investigations would be conducted in the case, police sources said.
