Kochi: The boy’s murder sent shockwaves across the Pullepady colony and nearby areas here. The gruesome incident happened at 7 am when Risty John, a Class IV student of St Alberts School and a resident of Para-pally House, Krishna Swamy Cross Road, Pullepady, was returning ho-me after buying eggs.
Suddenly accused Aji Devassia, 40 walked in from the opposite direction and attacked the boy without any provocation.
The only eyewitness Ani Jose, a middle-aged homemaker who was collecting drinking water from a public tap along the lane, made a hue and cry seeing the boy getting stabbed repeatedly. Soon residents rushed in and chased the attacker who was walking away and beat him up before handing him over to police. “He walked past and the boy was coming from the opposite direction.
Aji Devassia
At first, it seemed to me that he was embracing the boy. As the kid fell, I realised to my shock that he was being stabbed. I shouted at the top of my voice, but he continued to stab the boy in his neck and face. The poor kid couldn’t even cry,” said Ms Jose, whose younger son is a close friend of the victim.
The boy’s parents rushed in as the news spread and it was his mother Lini who took out the knife from his neck. His father John, an autorickshaw driver, rushed his son to a nearby hospital where he was declared brought dead. Later the autopsy report said the boy suffered a total of 27 injuries, including 17 stab wounds on his neck and face.
“We’d earlier received complaints from Aji’s mother Petrissa of him becoming violent at the house and have admitted him to a mental hospital at Thrissur. He was released only a week back after the hospital authorities said he was completely cured,” city police commissioner M. P. Dinesh said. Cops booked him under IPC Sec 302 (murder) and a court remanded him to judicial custody and lodged him in Ernakulam sub-jail.
