A cricket coach sexually abused minor girls for years — and the powers let him get away

In the last week of May, Bindu* a resident of Thiruvananthapuram, received a call from her daughter, who said, “Manu is coaching a team in the ongoing Pink tournament.” Manu M was the 17-year-old girl’s cricket coach at the Kerala Cricket Association (KCA) where she was training until three years ago.

When Bindu asked her what the issue was, her daughter disconnected the call. “A day later, I got a call from the Child Welfare Committee (CWC) saying my daughter had filed a complaint of sexual assault against Manu and had to be brought in for counselling. I was shocked and in pain, why didn’t she tell me anything?” Bindu said.

Her daughter, a cricket player, had come to Thiruvananthapuram from Chennai in May to take part in the fourth KCA TCM Pink T20 Challengers tournament. However, she wasn’t expecting to see her abuser still there.

In fact, she was confident that Manu, who had faced charges of sexually assaulting a minor in 2022, would have been fired by the authorities at KCA. She believed that the case was still going on and she did not expect to see Manu again. But to her shock, the KCA had not only failed to sack Manu, but had appointed him as the coach of one of the teams participating in the Pink T20 tournament that started on May 26.

On May 29, she approached the CWC, revealing the details of years of sexual assault. When news of her complaint became public, other survivors who had trained under Manu between 2018 and 2024 came forward and filed complaints against him.

Manu has now been booked in seven cases under the Protection of Children against Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act and was arrested in June by the Cantonment police in Thiruvananthapuram.