Grandfather, great-grandfather accused of raping toddler held in Dhoonidhoo

The police, on Saturday morning, transported two men arrested from Southern Maldives for the rape of a toddler, a girl who has yet to reach two years of age, to the Dhoonidhoo Custodial.

The two men – identified by the police only as a 62-year-old male and an 81-year-old male – are the victim’s grandfather and great-grandfather.

The two were arrested from their home island on Friday afternoon and taken to the G. A. Gemanafushi Magistrate Court, which remanded them to 15 days in jail. The police were forced to transport the two men out of Gemanafushi to the military base in G. Dh. Kaadedhdhoo on Friday night after an angry crowd of locals gathered outside the Gemanafushi Police Station to protest against the two men.

The two were transported from Kaadedhdhoo to Velana International Aiport (VIA) under police escort, and promptly whisked away to Dhoonidhoo on a police speedboat on Saturday morning.

The victim’s great-grandfather had exited the VIA domestic terminal in a wheelchair, while his son – the victim’s grandfather – had walked behind him. They were surrounded by police officers but weren’t restrained.

The third man connected to the case – the victim’s 33-year-old father – was arrested by the police from an apartment in suburban Hulhumale’ where he had been holed up in, surrounded by an angry crowd of locals.

The crowd, which had been gathered since Friday afternoon, had gotten increasingly restless as the time went by, while police officers waited on a court warrant to make the arrest.

They began began throwing rocks and other objects at the apartment, shattering windows and the glass balcony door.

Special Operations (SO) officers were deployed to the area, and their use of pepper spray to control the crowd resulted in violent clashes which left several injured, officers and civilians alike.

Of the three men held for the rape, the grandfather, who works as a muezzin at a local mosque, had long been accused of repeated sexual offenses against children of different ages by local residents. Meanwhile, a video of the great-grandfather sexually harassing a young girl who appears in her pre-teens recently leaked to the public, spurring the Prosecutor General Hussain Shameem into ordering a police investigation into the incident.

The rape of the toddler was reported to the authorities on Wednesday, January 15.

According to the toddler’s family on her mother’s side, hospital examinations confirmed she had been brutally raped by multiple assailants.

“The examinations took six hours. The examinations showed the child had been brutally raped. The child sustained irreparable injuries. The doctor read the Shahada when he read the results. Said it was inhumane. She has suffered to that extent,” said a family member who spoke to Sun on condition of anonymity.

The toddler, who her family reports to be showing signs of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), has been taken into the custody of Gender Ministry.

The rape case sparked protests in the capital, Male’ City, and several islands in Southern Maldives.

The protest in Male’ was staged in front of the Gender Ministry headquarters. Gender Minister Shidhatha Shareef, who made a stop at the scene of the protest, was met with demands for her immediate resignation.