A special court has sentenced four men to life imprisonment for robbing and gangraping a woman defence official from Pune in 2010.
The Maharashtra Control of Organised Crime Act (MCOCA) court Judge S S Gosavi yesterday held the four -- Deepak Jawale, Abhay Purey, Vijay Bade and Sunil Ekhande -- guilty and slapped a fine of Rs five lakh on each one of them.
According to the prosecution, the victim, her husband, their son, and two others had gone to Parli Vaijnath temple in Beed district on April 9, 2010 in their car. On their way back, they made a brief halt at a village in Beed district and continued towards Pune at night.
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The four convicts chased them in their car and stopped them near Chindhori village in the district. They forced the occupants out of the car and beat them. Then they took the woman official into their car and drove away.
After snatching ornaments and other valuables from her, they raped her in the running car and dumped her in a secluded area. The passers-by later rescued the woman and reunited her with the family, the prosecution said.
A case had been registered with Ambhore police in Beed district. The accused were later arrested and booked under charges of gangrape, kidnapping and robbery.
Total 34 witnesses were examined in the case.
The trial of the case was shifted from a Noida court to
Tis Hazari Court in Delhi on Supreme Court's order after the victim's friend approached it, fearing threat to his life and facing pressure to withdraw the case. The victim had shifted to London after the incident following the alleged threats from the accused.
SPP Narang, while respecting the court's decision, said there was ample evidence on record warranting conviction of all the nine accused.
After going through the verdict, she said she would recommend the case for filing an appeal before the high court.
In its verdict, the court said defective investigation has caused the loss of material evidence regarding connection of the accused with the offence, their identification, identification of the place of incident and the case property.
"Strangely enough, in this case, there is no question of false implication of the accused persons by the prosecutrix and complainant (victim's friend), rather it appears to be case of false implication of the accused persons by the IO.
"By creating many lapses in the investigation, leaving many threads of investigation untied, IO, on one hand, made it impossible that case be finally concluded in the conviction of the accused persons and, on the other hand, he had arrested the accused persons on the ground that they were involved in the commission of present offence but no proper identification of the accused persons was carried out from the complainant and the prosecutrix," the court said.
The judge said also held that the prosecution has not been able to prove through medical evidence any connection between the accused persons and the alleged offence.
She held that "the offence of gang rape was allegedly committed in the dark winter night at a secluded place i.E. jungle where there was no provision of light. Only the parking light of the car ... And inner small light of the car was lit at the time of commission of offence as per the case of the prosecution.
"To my mind, the car's inner light could not have been sufficient to light the complete car in a manner that the girl would have been able to identify or remember the faces of the accused persons during the commission of offence.
