Forcefully throwing open the gates of a house, a couple of men walk into the premises where a woman and a few men are standing, facing them. As the woman begins to raise her hand and talk, one of the men hits her and she falls to the ground. He then drags her to the compound wall and continues to hit her. The visuals of this attack that happened on Sunday morning, emerged from a CCTV kept outside the house in Manacaud, which falls under Poonthura, a coastal town in Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala. The police have registered a case and arrested the accused, a man called NS Mansilil Sudheer, aged 37 years.
Thiruvananthapuram city police commissioner Balram Kumar Upadhya said in a statement that the first accused (Sudheer) has been arrested in the case. The accused had barged into the house of 23 year old Amina, alleging that people staying on rent in her house were creating noise. The lower floor of Amina's house was rented to workers of a nearby electric shop, said the police.
Sudheer and another man called Naushad raised arguments over the tenants taking their selfie in their compound and said that it should not be allowed. The incident happened at around 9.30 am on Sunday.
When the visuals came out, Sudheer had initially been absconding. On Monday morning, Poonthura police arrested him. His brother Naushad, who runs a hotel in Attankkulangara, is still absconding.
Watch: Visuals of the attack
Several incidents of people barging into others’ homes and attacking them have been reported in Kerala in recent years. However, most of these are in the name of moral policing. In 2019, a gang led by the then Press Club secretary of Thiruvananthapuram Radhakrishnan had barged into the house of a fellow journalist woman and attacked her guest, while forcing her and her little children into a room. The moral policing incident had caused a furor and women journalists in the city had protested against it, leading to the arrest of Radhakrishnan as well as his expulsion from the Press Club. However he later returned to the post claiming that there was a court order in his favour. In April this year, he was dismissed by the Malayalam Daily Kerala Kaumudi for his harassment of the woman journalist.