As the nation stands together in protest of the brutal gang rape and murder of an eight-year-old girl in Kathua, Jammu and Kashmir, there seem to be a few people who are strangely justifying the act. In tune, the Kotak Mahindra Bank sacked an employee Friday, April 13, after he is said to have written an insensitive and irresponsible Facebook post on the incident.
On his Facebook post, Vishnu Nandakumar, the assistant manager of the bank's Palarivattom branch in Kerala, said that it is good that "she was killed."
"It is good that she (the rape victim) was killed now. Otherwise, she would have come as a bomb against India," he had written on the post.
The bank terminated his services after his post garnered massive attention on the social networking site. The bank's rating on its Facebook page then nosedived and hundreds of social media users slammed Vishnu and demanded the termination of "this hopeless cruel mind." Vishnu is then said to have deactivated his account.
"We've terminated Vishnu Nandakumar from the services of the bank on Wednesday, April 11, 2018 for poor performance," the bank said in its official FB page.
"It is extremely disheartening to see such comments being made in the aftermath of such a tragedy by anyone including an ex-employee. We strongly condemn this statement."
The Kotak Mahindra Bank employee is the son of senior RSS leader E N Nandakumar and also a close relative of BJP state general secretary A N Radhakrishnan, reported the Indian Express.
Post the outrage, Vishnu's father said that he had admitted his mistake and also apologized for the same. However, he said that Vishnu wasn't sacked and instead had resigned as he had gotten another job.
The gory incident of the girl's rape and murder has outraged many and scores of people have been taking to the streets to demand justice for the little one. Rahul Gandhi had led a candlelight march to India Gate in New Delhi late Thursday in support of the eight-year-old girl and the march saw scores of people joining Rahul and his sister Priyanka. Their mother Sonia Gandhi was also in attendance.
After maintaining a stoic silence for quite some time, PM Narendra Modi also spoke about the gory incident and said that the guilty would not be spared.
"The incidents in the past two days are an embarrassment to the civilized society. We bow our head before the founding figures of the nation," Modi said. "No culprit will be spared, justice will be delivered. Those daughters will get due justice; all of us have to fix the problem together. The guilty will not go unpunished and the Government of India will not leave any stone unturned to ensure that happens."
The girl was kidnapped January 10 and taken to a forest, where she was sedated and raped. Her rapists then took her to a temple and locked her, where she was raped by several people for about a week. She was strangulated and killed January 13. Her body was found by a local January 17.
Kathua rape fact file
- In January, retired revenue official Sanji Ram hatches a plan to drive away the Bakarwal tribe from the Rasana area in Kathua.
- He discusses the matter with his nephew and provoked him to take revenge on the tribe, who had earlier assaulted him.
- The nephew agrees to kidnap the little girl and shares his plans with his friend Parvesh Kumar.
- The two then buy local substances to sedate her.
- Ram and his nephew then abduct the girl and take her to a nearby forest where she is sedated and raped by the nephew, a minor.
- They then lock her in a temple. The nephew then calls Ram's son Vishal Jangotra in Meerut and asks him if he wants to rape her.
- Her family file a police complaint and the hunt for the eight-year-old begins
- Vishal reaches Rasana. He and the nephew rape the girl. The little girl was raped multiple times, even by police officer Deepak Khajuria.
- The girl is then strangulated and the nephew hits her head with a stone twice. Her body is then dumped in the jungle.
- The girl's body is found by a local January 17.
