Angry Indians’ calls for castration of rapists is often seen as just a hyperbole, but things got real for a swami from a Kerala ashram. A young woman he allegedly tried to rape chopped off his penis, in what she claims to be an act of vengeance and self-defence.
A 23-year-old woman, whose parents were followers of the swami from an ashram at Padmana in Kollam, Kerala, called the Thiruvananthapuram police control room on Friday night.
She informed police that she had cut off the sexual organs of a 54-year-old swami after he allegedly tried to rape her.
The alleged rapist, Hari alias Ganeshananda Theerthapada Swami, was admitted to the Medical College Hospital in Thiruvananthapuram in a critical condition in the wee hours of Saturday, around 12:30 am. The incident is reported to have happened at 11:30 pm on Friday, according to police sources.
Police say that she has also given a statement alleging that the swami has been abusing her for several years, since the time she was in high school.
When asked why she would have chosen to do something like this, the Circle Inspector of Pettai station in Thiruvananthapuram said:
She knew that no one would believe her if she had said that she had been sexually assaulted by a man of god. So, this was perhaps the only way she could think of.
The woman has been taken to a women’s shelter run by the government.
The Thiruvananthapuram Medical College said in a press statement that the man was now out of danger.
A 54-year-old man from Kollam was admitted at 12.39 am to the hospital on Saturday. His penis had been cut (90%) and was hanging precariously. There was no way it could be stitched back. Plastic surgeons who are urology experts in the hospital carried out an emergency surgery to stop the blood loss and to enable him to pass urine.
The hospital also said that his condition was stable. According to what police told The News Minute, the swami used to visit the girl’s home at Kannamula in Thiruvananthapuram to pray for her ailing father.
According to the young woman, it is at her home that he had repeatedly assaulted her. She has also told police that her mother had been aware of his acts. Knowing that he was arriving on Friday night, the woman is said to have kept the knife ready to chop off his genitals.
Pettai police also told The News Minute that a case had been filed against the man under IPC Section 376 (rape) and under sections of POCSO. "A case had been filed under POCSO as the assault and rape seem to have started when she was a minor," said the cop.
The girl's act is eerily similar to a sequence in a Malayalam movie 22 Female Kottayam, in which the heroine castrated the hero for forcing himself on her.
(This article was originally published in The News Minute)
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