The Kerala Police have filed a case against a former Kotak Mahindra Bank employee who had defended the rape and murder of an eight-year-old girl in Jammu and Kashmir’s Kathua district in January.
The police registered a case against Vishnu Nandakumar in Kochi’s Panangad police station, IANS reported. “Since he has been charged under a non-bailable offence, he will be arrested. The probe has begun and appropriate actions will follow,” a police officer told the news agency.
“Good that she was killed at this age itself,” Vishnu Nandakumar had reportedly said on Facebook. “Otherwise she would have grown up and come back as a suicide bomber against India.” Nandakumar was an assistant manager at Kotak Mahindra Bank’s Palarivattom branch in Kochi. His Facebook profile appears to have been deactivated.
The police have booked him under Section 153 A of the Indian Penal Code, for promoting enmity between different groups on grounds of religion, race, place of birth, residence or language and causing communal disharmony, according to DNA.
He shared the Facebook post even as the brutal rape and murder of the eight-year-old sparked statewide protests – and counter protests by the Hindu Ekta Manch against the arrest of the accused – with several groups demanding an inquiry by the Central Bureau of Investigation. The chargesheet the Crime Branch filed against eight accused, including a juvenile, revealed sordid details of the crime.
“It is extremely disheartening to see such comments being made in the aftermath of such tragedy by anyone including an ex-employee,” Kotak Mahindra Bank, which fired him earlier this week, said in a statement on Friday. “We strongly condemn this statement.”
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