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The petition filed by Suryanelli rape victim seeking to recall the High Court verdict discharging Mr. Kurien from the case referred to Division Bench. The court felt that the issue involved in the petition was of considerable relevance and importance, and needed to be resolved by a Division Bench. In her petition, the victim said the order passed by the court was in gross violation of the principles of natural justice as the complainant in the case had not been heard. She should have been made a party in the case and her version heard. The petition sought to review the High Court verdict passed in 2006. Challenging the decision, the victim, who was allegedly raped by 40-odd men in 1996 when she was only 16, approached the court stating that the order was passed without hearing her and she was also not made party to earlier proceedings. The Court observed that that the law was "quite shy" in protecting rights of victims of offence. Law initially gave little priority to the victim of an offence. Entire process had been on the rights of the accused, which was zealously guarded by courts, ignoring rights of victims in most of the cases. It was often forgotten that even the victims enjoy fundamental rights and by virtue of offence committed on them, their fundamental rights are infringed. The Court held that It was undisputable that the order of discharge had “worked to her prejudice and It could not be said that she had “no interest in the matter.” By ordering the discharge, the proceedings initiated by the complainant by way of a private complaint “got aborted.” She was entitled to be made a party in the proceedings and she was entitled to be heard. The issue involved in the case was likely to arise in future also. Therefore an authoritative decision will be 'highly profitable'. The court said the attitude displayed by the State in 2006 when Mr. Kurien’s petition came up “appears to be disappointing.” The State seemed to have preferred only a formal objection to the plea, thereby indicating that it had no serious objection to granting the relief to the petitioner. It was true that the State government took up the matter before the apex court. But if the aggrieved persons felt that an appeal by the State government was only a formality, they could not be found fault with. The occasion for the petitioner to file a private complaint was the decision of the investigation agency to drop the name of Mr. Kurien in 2006 from the list of accused. Therefore, to a certain extent, there was a conflict of interest between the complainant and the State government. The court had in 2007 acquitted Kurien for lack of evidence. The victim’s counsel MR Rajendran Nair said the Supreme Court order directing the High Court to re-examine its decision acquitting all but one accused in the case convicted by the trial court gave an opportunity to challenge the order favouring Kurien. The High Court, however, had dismissed her petition in October this year challenging the trial court order refusing her request for a fresh inquiry into the case including Kurien in the light of the disclosure by the sole convict in the case V Dharmarajn to a Malayalam news channel that, he had taken Kurien to her in his car to a guest house at Kumaly in Idukki district where Kurien raped the victim. The Director General of Prosecution contended that in a revision jurisdiction, it was not incumbent upon the court to hear anybody as it exercised supervisory jurisdiction. The State government argued that Mr. Kurien was discharged by the High Court for want of proper evidence. It had been six years and seven months since the verdict was passed discharging him. Therefore, there was no need to review the judgment now. A special court had sentenced 36 persons to rigorous imprisonment in 2000. However, on an appeal, the High Court acquitted all of them except one stating that the girl had consensual sex with all of them. The case was pending in the Supreme Court for over 8 years. After the incident of gangrape of a paramedic student in a Delhi bus in December last year, the case came up before the apex court which reversed the earlier high court judgment. An accused, Dharmarajan, was arrested after he spoke to a TV channel some months ago. Dharmarajan had made the disclosure while hiding in Karnataka after breaking out of the prison years ago while serving a jail term in the case. He later retracted his statement in the court. According to the prosecution, the victim belonging to the remote village of Suryanelli in the hilly Idukki district was abducted and raped by over 40 men for over a month at various places in Kerala, Tamil Nadu and Karnataka in January 1996. Though Kurien was never made an accused in the case, the victim, who recognised him after his photograph appeared in a newspaper report, had alleged that he was among her tormentors. A court in Idukki had in March this year rejected a plea by the victim for a re-probe into the alleged involvement of Kurien in the case, holding that there was no new ground for a fresh investigation. |