Pollachi sex scandal: SC declines to entertain plea for court monitored probe

New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Friday declined to entertain a public interest writ petition for a court-monitored probe conducted by the CBI into the Pollach sex scandal in Tamil Nadu in which hundreds of girls are allegedly involved. The petition wanted the trial to be shifted outside Tamil Nadu.

The petitioners, advocates Rajarajan and Y. William Vinoth Kumar in a writ petition contended that they were completely shocked to hear about news of sexual assault of a college student from Pollachi town and a wider network that is suspected to operate such crimes on a regular basis, comprising politically-connected men.

When the matter came up for hearing, a three judge Bench of Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi and Justices Deepak Gupta and Sanjiv Khanna asked the petitioners to approach the Madras High Court as a similar petition was pending. The Bench then dismissed the PIL.     

The petitioner stated that since victims and accused are living in the same locality and since the town of Pollachi is a small town and to make the victims to come forward to attend and depose before trail court without subject to public exposure and to avoid social stigma, trail be conducted out of the State of Tamil Nadu.

They stated that it was reported in the media that hundreds of young girls i.e. school and college girls, housewives, and professional ladies were sexually exploited, harassed, tortured, extorted and number of videos were taped by a sex mafia which is operating in and around the town of Pollachi.

They said that the modus operandi of the sex mafia was to lure women with fake female accounts on Facebook. In most of the cases, they struck a conversation with the victims, asking questions on lesbianism and other sex related topics. After friendship conversations the sex mafia turned into sexual chats and they later revealed their identity and forced the women to meet in person citing their chats.

The culprits harassed women in moving vehicles, hotels and even a farmhouse near Anamalai forest. On 24.2.2019 one of the victim girl lodged a police complaint alleging that she was forced to have sexual relationship, and was subjected to physical torture, sexually harassment and video-graphed by a gang of four known members, who were part of the sex mafia.

The petitioners stated that before the case was transferred to the CBI, the Coimbatore Rural Superintendent of police R. Pandiarajan instead of conducting a free and fair investigation had revealed the name of the victim and one of the immediate members of the victim family publicly in a press release. Revealing the identity of the complainant and their family members was completely contrary to guideline to be followed in such cases.

Consequently the friends of the accused, who were also suspected as members of sex mafia, attacked and criminally intimidated the brother of the victim girl. Hence they prayed for granting protection to the victims, court monitored probe and shifting the trial outside Tamil Nadu.