After its televised visuals shocked Kerala and got Chief Minister V S Achuthanandan to personally intervene, the police on Monday arrested five local men in Edappal who had assaulted and nearly stripped a pregnant beggar woman from Tamil Nadu on the town’s main road on Sunday, accusing her of robbing a gold anklet.A small mob had turned on the middle-aged woman and her two children begging nearby after a woman shopping in the area started shouting that gold anklet on her infant’s leg was missing. The beggar woman, who could not speak Malayalam, was kicked and hit repeatedly when she failed to answer her tormenters.All the while she kept wailing, pointing to her full belly and pleading for mercy, while her little daughter and son, both no older than six years, hugged the feet of those in the mob. The kids too were assaulted.But after several minutes of the torture and frisking of the woman and her kids, the mob could not find the anklet on them and left the three on the roadside in a heap. A passerby called the police, who took the woman and her children to the local police station and searched their bundles and persons, to find no gold.Unknown to the mob, the reporter of a local cable TV channel who happened to be at the spot, filmed the gory spectacle and aired it. Within hours, it was playing on most TV channels in Kerala, and a few outside, and an angry V S were demanding action.The police took the injured woman to a local hospital, but the woman and her kids reportedly went away soon after. Police sources say they have instructions to proceed with the case against her assailants.
