Bogota. Manuel Ranoque, stepfather and father of the four indigenous children who were lost for forty days in the jungle after a plane crash in which their mother and three other people died, spent his first day in prison this Sunday.
Ranoque was accused by the Prosecutor of aggravated violent carnal access and abusive sexual acts against his eldest stepdaughter, Lesly Mucutuy, considered the heroine of the odyssey that the minors lived, trapped for almost six weeks in a thick jungle area located between the departments of Caquetá and Guaviare, in the south of the country.
María Fátima Valencia, Lesly’s grandmother, confirmed that her granddaughter attended a meeting with prosecutors in recent days, after which it was decided to issue an arrest warrant against Ranoque, who had already been accused by her of domestic violence and sexual abuse against the girl. since I was ten years old.
Although the defendant worked alongside the army and a group of indigenous people during the search, selling the image of a grieving man and determined to find the four minors, as soon as they were rescued alive, his maternal family was strongly opposed to his being handed over. custody of Lesly (13), Soleiny (9), Noriel (4) and Cristin (1), the last two their children.
The children began their epic battle to survive on the morning of May 1, when the precarious plane in which they were traveling from Araracuara to San José del Guaviare, piloted by a former taxi driver, crashed in the middle of the jungle, killing four and four survivors, children.
After verifying that their mother had passed away, the older infants stocked up on food that some passengers carried in their luggage, as well as a couple of cell phones, disposable diapers for the baby, and other objects they considered useful.
From then on, she began her amazing journey through a jungle inhabited by all kinds of insects, reptiles, and carnivorous mammals, which made the rescuers predict that their days were numbered, especially the one-year-old girl.
After locating the remains of the aircraft, army men accompanied by trained dogs, as well as seventy natives of the region, braved the natural obstacles that make it almost impossible to walk, until they found traces of the survivors.
The entire country was on edge for weeks, following minute by minute the news about the rescue efforts, but as the days went by, expectations that they were alive diminished, despite which the search persisted.
When there was already talk that “the children were swallowed by the jungle”, one of the German shepherds who participated in the search got lost, leading the rescuers to think that perhaps he had found the children.
A couple of days later they were found in the middle of a tropical downpour, sitting on plastic, starving, with sores all over their bodies, but alive, around a makeshift tent.
They were then brought to this capital and interned at the Central Military Hospital, where they were totally isolated until it was considered that they had recovered their strength and they were transferred to a shelter at the state-owned Institute for Family Welfare, where they are still.
