THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Neyyattinkara police on Saturday arrested a man, who impregnated his 17-year-old stepdaughter twice. The police identified the accused as Ajimon (39), a daily wages worker hailing from Pattom and currently residing at Nellimoodu near Neyyattinkara.

According to the police, Ajimon was arrested and remanded in judicial custody on Saturday on charges of raping and impregnating his step-daughter, who is mentally challenged besides being a minor.

Neyyattinkara DSP Y R Rustum said that the police came to know about the rape when Ajimon tried to abort the foetus at SAT Hospital here. The hospital authorities reported the matter to the Neyyattinkara police as the girl was a minor. In the investigation police found out that it was her step-father himself, who was behind her pregnancy. "The girl had, in fact, given an imaginary person's name as the one who impregnated her, before the hospital authorities," he said.

But, on conducting an inquiry, the police learned that there was no possibility for another person entering her house without the notice of the neighbours. Meanwhile, a staff of the care home under the Nirbhaya scheme of the state government, where the girl was being housed, squeezed the secret out of her after getting close with her, said the DSP.

The girl also spilled out another secret that she had undergone abortion once about a year ago. Then also, the girl had given another person's name at the hospital and saved Ajimon, presumably because she feared him.

The DSP also said that Ajimon, who deserted his first wife for the victim's mother, started raping her since 2011. The girl had faced an alleged molestation bid by one of her neighbours two years ago. While the accused in that case, who is still under judicial custody, claimed that he came to her house only to watch TV, it was Ajimon, who alleged that he saw the accused making advances towards her.

"Ajimon started sexually exploiting her by accusing her for inviting that man to the house and threatening to defame her by spreading the story among others," Rustom said.

The mother of the girl has told the police that she was completely unaware of her husband's activities.

