Kiss of Love couple held for sex racket

[email protected] (News Network)
November 19, 2015

Thiruvananthapuram, Nov 19: Six people, including a couple who led Kerala’s controversial Kiss of Love (KoL) protest against moral policing, were arrested by the police for involvement in an online sex racket in Kochi, early on Wednesday.

sex racket

The police said Rahul Pasupalan acted as supplier of girls, including minors, and his wife, model Rashmi Nair, was an agent who also offered sexual services to solicitors.

S Sreejith, IG of Police (Crimes) said the arrests were made after statewide raids under operation “Big Daddy”. Four others arrested have been identified as Abdul Khader alias Akbar, the kingpin of the racket, Lineesh Mathew, Ajeesh and Aashiq. The arrested have been booked under Sections 366A and 370 of the IPC, Section 67 of the IT Act and Section 13 of the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act. Two minor girls, identified as sisters, brought in from Bengaluru by Lineesh, a woman based in Lingarajapuram in Bengaluru, are in custody of the child welfare committee.

The investigation team traced the racket through contact information for escort services provided by Abdul Khader on a classified site Locanto. The police tracked down Khader through people who posed as solicitors, leading them to Rashmi. After a deal was finalised, Rashmi arrived at a hotel near the Cochin International Airport with Rahul and their five-year-old son. The couple were arrested at the hotel. Earlier, Lineesh was arrested after she flew in from Bengaluru with the two minor girls.

Two other women who were waiting at the hotel’s parking lot for the decoy solicitors escaped, speeding away in their car, injuring a policeman. One of the women is married to Aashiq. “The operation was planned with extensive digital evidence. Khader has been in contact with Rahul for a year,” Sreejith told reporters. The police seized two cars, a tablet phone, about 20 mobile phones and Rs 8,600 from the accused.

Rahul and Rashmi shot to international fame in November last year after their arrest at Marine Drive in Kochi during the KoL protest, organised against moral policing.

A photograph of them kissing inside a police vehicle became an iconic image for anti-fascist dissent. KoL also ran into opposition from organisations which questioned the idea of “anarchy” it endorsed. On the Internet, the opposition found renewed vigour in wake of the arrest; critics of KoL posted offensive messages on the official KoL page on Facebook.

Late Wednesday evening, the page’s administrators posted a message stating that the protest was a collective uprising against cultural fascism and arrest of two of its participants did not undermine its importance.

Op Big Daddy

Operation Big Daddy also led to the arrest of six others, from different parts of the state, in connection with a Facebook page titled ‘Kochu Sundarikal’ in which photographs of minors were posted along with explicit sexual comments.

The arrested are Ummer, a UAE-based man and administrator of the page, Bijesh, Sony Kurian, Sujith, Chandrakumar and Pradeep.

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News Network
April 24,2020

Thane, Apr 24: A 34-year-old man was allegedly attacked on suspicion of being a COVID-19 patient and died after falling into a gutter during the assault in Kalyan town of Maharashtra's Thane district, police said on Friday.

The incident took place on Wednesday morning, when Ganesh Gupta had stepped out of his home to purchase some essentials amid the COVID-19 lockdown, an official said.

On noticing some policemen manning the street, the victim took an alternate route, where a few passersby assaulted him after he coughed while walking, he said.

The men suspected him of being a COVID-19 patient and attacked him, causing him to fall into a gutter and die, the official said.

The deceased's body was sent for post-mortem and a case of accidental death has been registered as of now, the station house officer of the Khadakpada police station said.

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Agencies
July 22,2020

Mathura, Jul 22: A local court in Uttar Pradesh's Mathura on Wednesday sentenced 11 policemen, including the then Deputy Superintendent of Police, to life imprisonment in a case pertaining to the murder of royal Raja Man Singh in 1985.

District Judge Sadhana Rani Thakur announced the life imprisonment sentence a day after holding them guilty of the killing. Three policemen were, however, acquitted. Four men died during the trial.

The policemen were convicted under Section 302 (murder), 148 (rioting) and 149 (Every member of unlawful assembly guilty of offence committed in prosecution of common object) of the Indian Penal Code.

The verdict comes 35 years after Man Singh was killed. He, along with two others, was shot dead in police firing a day after he crashed his jeep into the then Rajasthan Chief Minister Shiv Charan Mathur's helicopter in a fit of anger.

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Agencies
May 25,2020

Hyderabad, May 25: Indicating foul play in the death of nine people, including six of a family, whose bodies were fished out from a well near Warangal, a forensic expert on Sunday virtually ruled out suicide theory, saying it appeared seven of them had been dragged and thrown into the water body.

Mystery shrouded the death of nine people, including six of a family, whose bodies were found in a well, five of them on Friday and four on Thursday, on the outskirts of Warangal in Telangana.

Police stepped up the probe and forensic analysis was also underway in the case.

The forensic expert, who visited the crime scene as part of the investigation citing preliminary tests, said that the seven of nine people had scratch injuries and appeared to have been "dragged" and "thrown" into the well.

Forensic reports are expected in 10 days, the forensic expert told media on Sunday adding after examining the crime scene it appears that the deaths were not suicides.

"We have preserved all organs and the same were sent to forensic science laboratory (FSL) for examination... some two or three persons might have been involved in the crime. There are scratch injuries on the bodies," he said.

"It appears that they were thrown into the water... There were no injuries on the child's body. We are awaiting the forensic report (to ascertain) whether they were poisoned. It didn't appear as if they committed suicide," the expert, who performed the post-mortem said.

Police sources said at least two people were picked up for questioning.

Bodies of the head of the family, wife, daughter and three-year old grandson were found floating and fished out on Thursday.

On Friday morning, some bodies were seen floating following which police pumped out the water from the well and found others.

The 48-year old man had migrated from West Bengal over 20 years ago and had settled down here. His family had been staying in two rooms on the premises of the unit, police had earlier said.

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