She Should Have Gone to Cops Instead of Cutting Off His Penis: Shashi Tharoor

Congress MP Shashi Tharoor has said that a 23-year-old law student who chopped off the penis of a godman who had been raping her for eight years should have approached the police instead.

CNN-News18

Updated:May 21, 2017, 9:51 AM IST

She Should Have Gone to Cops Instead of Cutting Off His Penis: Shashi Tharoor

File image of Shashi Tharoor. (Image: AP)

Thiruvananthapuram: Congress MP Shashi Tharoor has said that a 23-year-old law student who chopped off the penis of a godman who had been raping her for eight years should have approached the police instead.

Speaking to CNN-News18, the lawmaker from Thiruvananthapuram said, “There is something gratifying about such swift justice but she would have better taken the matter to the police rather than taking the law into her own hands (sic)."

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"I sympathise with her, as most people would. But we need a society where justice prevails, not one where every individual seeks it with a knife in her hand," Tharoor added.

The incident occurred on Friday night when the woman chopped off the self-styled godman’s penis after he allegedly tried to rape her again. She then called the police who rushed the accused to hospital where an emergency surgery was performed on him. But the doctors were unable to re-attach his penis as “90% of it had been severed”.

According to a police complaint filed by the woman, the accused, identified as Swamy Gangeshananda, a member of the Kollam-based Panmana Ashram, had been raping her at her home for the last eight years. The woman said he first raped her when she was 16 years old.

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The accused had initially told the police that he had cut off his penis himself as he “no longer needed it”. But he later changed his statement to say that he was mutilated by the woman when he asked her to press his legs.

He has been booked under Section 376 (Rape) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) and under the Protection of Children from Sexual Offenses Act (POCSO).

In the police complaint, the law student has said that her mother was also sexually abused by the accused. Her father suffered a paralysis attack a few years ago. They were followers of the ashram, local media reported.

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Reacting to the news, Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan hailed the woman's act as "brave" and "courageous". "It was a courageous step, no doubt about it," he told reporters.