Overview

• On October 3, a Thiruvananthapuram special court found Hassankutty alias Kabeer, 41, guilty under the POCSO Act and other charges for abducting and assaulting a toddler from a pavement-dwelling migrant family in February 2024.
• Coverage differs on the total term: PTI-linked reports say the court fixed an effective 22-year sentence to run concurrently with a ₹72,000 fine, while The Hindu reports the judge set a 67-year quantum with some sentences concurrent and the same fine.
• The child was taken as she slept beside her parents near Chakka and was found unconscious the next evening near the BrahMos campus; she was hospitalized and survived.
• Investigators reviewed more than 100 CCTV feeds, recovered the accused’s hair and other biological traces from the child and clothing, and secured DNA matches corroborated by accredited forensic labs.
• The prosecution’s four-month trial examined 41 witnesses and 11 material objects, and police said the accused tried to evade arrest for nearly two weeks before being caught in Kollam and had prior cases including a 2022 child abuse case.