Special Public Prosecutor advocate Ujjwal Nikam, who represented victims in both of the rape cases, looked content after he read out the court's pronouncement.
"It is for the first time in India the court has recourse to the provision of Section 376 E of IPC and has awarded death penalty to three guilty persons that is Vijay Jadhav, Mohammad Kasim Bengali and Mohammad Salim Ansari. We pointed out to the court that in all, there are ten aggravating circumstances for awarding death penalty to these accused. Out of the three accused, two were juvenile, they were guilty of some offences of committing theft of railway property , they were released on bond of good behavior. When the bond was still in existence, they did not improve but they committed first ganagrape on 31st July in Shakti Mill on one telephone operator and then after twenty days they committed another gangrape on one photojournalist on 22nd August and in both cases they were held guilty," Nikam said.
"We pointed out the judge that in all there are ten aggravating circumstances which warrants death penalty against the three accused. The first which we relied upon that though they were defenseless but the accused raped in a multiple manner and had beaten her, secondly, they laughed at her and they told that they are dangerous people and have committed such acts before and this was a challenge thrown at law enforcement agencies. We further pointed out many circumstances they were laughing when the victim was in pain and crying but they were enjoying the act of rape. We pointed that this shows the depravity and the mental callousness on the part of the accused and hence court has death penalty to three and life imprisonment to one accused," Nikam added.
The Mumbai court in a landmark judgement has handed down death sentence to three convicts involved in the Shakti Mill gangrape case. It is for the first time in the history of independent India that convicts who have committed rape have been punished with death penalty.
This becomes the first conviction in the country under the amended law, introduced on the suggestions of the Justice Verma Committee in the wake of the December 16, 2012 Delhi gang rape.
The court found all the three accused rapists to be repeat offenders who not only raped the photojournalist but also that of a telephone operator.
The court termed the rapes to be diabolic in nature and not natural, it also added that the rapsists enjoyed the victims helplessness while committing such gruesome act.
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All the three convicts have been charged under Section 376 (E) of the Indian Penal Code.
On March 20, the sessions court convicted five adults, including Mohammad Ashfak Shaikh and Siraj Sheikh, of the gang rapes of a telephone operator and the photojournalist on the Shakti Mills compound last year. Of the five, Jadhav, Bengali and Ansari were involved in both cases of gang-rape of a photojournalist and a telephone operator in the deserted mill in Mumbai.