Thiruvananthapuram∙ Angry protest of the accused in the court after the verdict in the murder case of a foreign woman. Many people gathered to hear the court pronounce the sentence. Relatives of the accused also came to hear the verdict. After finding them guilty, the court asked the accused, ‘Do you know that the maximum punishment for the crime you have committed is hanging.’ The accused, who said that they felt guilty, later pleaded that they did not commit the crime and requested that the punishment should be reduced as much as possible considering their age.
The defendants repeated this yesterday when the judgment was pronounced. One of the accused said that he should be ready to conduct a lie test in the case. A yoga instructor fled the scene. He is bilingual. He has not been investigated. It was also requested to examine the hair obtained from the dead body of the murdered woman. Observing that this is a rare case, the court also stated that the image of the country has been tarnished by this incident.
This is the first time that a foreign tourist from a different country has been brutally murdered in Kerala. The verdict also upheld the prosecution’s contention that the accused should be given maximum punishment considering the nature of the offence. As soon as the double life sentence was handed down, the accused went berserk in the courtroom. Both angrily asked not to be punished. He repeated what he said earlier.
The victim was tortured several times
Before being killed, the foreigner was raped four times by the accused. The accused confessed that the young woman was in their custody for seven hours. Umesh trapped the young woman who walked from the Kovalam beach to the temple auditorium which is located in the mangroves of Vazhamutta by pretending to be a tourist guide. Along with his friend Udayan, the young woman was given drugs and taken to the forest and brutally tortured.
The young woman regained consciousness in the evening and was strangled to death while trying to escape from the mangrove. The dead body was tied to a nearby tree using a wild vine to make it look like suicide. In the following days, the accused visited the spot and observed the body. A few days later, the vine rotted and the body fell apart. The head was cut off.
Umesh was accused in 13 cases including drug and assault and Udayan in six cases. There are also complaints that women and boys have been sexually assaulted. Some of his victims led the police to Umesh. Both were drug addicts for years. Their resort was the mangroves of Wazhmutte.