Kerala Assembly: Treasury and Opposition benches spar over police response to crimes against women and children

Kerala Assembly debates police handling of crimes against women and children, sparking political tensions and accusations.

Treasury and Opposition benches sparred in the Kerala Assembly on July 10 over whether women and child victims of crimes received justice and empathy from the Kerala Police.

Revolutionary Marxist Party (RMP) leader K.K. Rema initiated the politically primed and barbed back-and-forth by serving a notice for an adjournment debate on the police’s “lack of sensitivity and diligence in empathetically investigating crimes against women and children and protecting the victims from the threat of reprisal.” The often raucous debate culminated in a Congress-led United Democratic Front (UDF) walkout.

Ms. Rema highlighted the recent public assault on a Dalit girl at Aroor in Alappuzha for daring to complain to the police against a set of alleged CPI(M) workers who brutalised her brothers, both minors, to back the Opposition’s case against the State police.

Ms. Rema also attempted to score a political point by alleging that Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan had “shrunk away” from replying to her adjournment notice. Health Minister Veena George answered in Mr. Vijayan’s stead. 

Ms. Rema accused the government of failing to act on the 2019 Justice Hema Committee report that detailed sexual exploitation and gender inequality in the Malayalam film industry.

She spotlighted the government’s “failure” to bring to book top Kerala Cricket Assosiation (KCA) officials who allowed a cricket coach to allegedly sexually assault teenage players for more than a decade with impunity.

Ms. Rema stressed the “belated prosecution” of a CUSAT professor supposedly close to the CPI(M) for outraging his student’s modesty on the sidelines of a campus arts festival in March to present the Opposition’s case against the State police.