Kerala shocked by brutality of Perumbavoor girl's murder (Kerala's Nirbhaya )

A 30-year-old law student in Kerala was raped and murdered and her body was found with the intestines hanging out in an incident that has chilling echoes of the 2012 gangrape of Delhi student Jyoti Singh, who came to be known as Nirbhaya. The woman was found dead inside her home in Ernakulam on Thursday with signs of strangling and 30 wounds on her body. She is believed to have been brutalized with a sharp instrument and also had a head injury. She was last seen by neighbours in the afternoon when she had gone to fill water near her house. The police suspect she was assaulted between 1 and 5 pm. The neighbours say they didn't hear anything.

The woman lived with her mother, who, the police say, is mentally unstable and has been admitted to a hospital. Her father had left them years ago and the family was struggling financially. No arrests have been made in the past four days. Ahead of voting for assembly polls in the state, the case has drawn political attention. Kerala Home Minister Ramesh Chennithala told reporters that investigations are on and those responsible would be dealt with severely. "The incident is terrifying and a reminder of how such things are on the rise in Kerala and other states," said TN Seema, a Left candidate for the May 16 polls.

In December 2012, 23-year-old medical student Jyoti Singh was gang-raped on a moving bus by five men who tortured her with an iron rod. She died 13 days later amid angry protests in India. The outrage led to new laws on crimes against women. According to the police, the incident took place in broad daylight but none of the neighbours staying nearby intervened. It has been five days since the incident took place, but the police are yet to arrest anyone, and relatives allege that no political leaders or activists have come forward to offer help. Friends of the victim, who was staying with her mentally challenged mother in a single room house, came to know about her death two days later from a local newspaper. They feel the perpetrator could have been inside the house for a long time considering the number of wounds and the manner in which the victim was assaulted. The assault and murder is reminiscent to the December 16, 2012 gangrape of Nirbhaya, a physiotherapy intern, who was assaulted by six men on a private bus in Delhi. The CPI-M has latched onto the murder which occurred on April 28 to accuse the Congress-led UDF government in the poll-bound Kerala of 'inaction' to trace the culprits. "Police have failed to get any lead about the culprits even five days after the incident," CPM state secretary Kodiyeri Balakrishnan said in Thiruvananthapuram.

Rejecting the charge, Home Minister Ramesh Chennithala said a "scientific" probe was being conducted into the incident and asserted that the culprits would be brought to book. Police said Ernakulam Range IG Mahipal Yadav is supervising the probe by a team of officials, headed by Perumbavoor Dy SP after it was reported that 30-year-old Jisha was subjected to rape and fatal assault at her small wayside home in Kuruppampadi police limit. Jisha was found dead in a pool of blood at 8 PM by her mother when she reached home after her daily menial job. "It was a brutal murder. There were stab injuries on her body. We suspect she was subjected to smothering and strangulation," Yadav told PTI.

He, however, refused to share details about the investigation. Police said whether the woman was subjected to sexual assault before or after the murder would be clear only from the postmortem report.