“The police did not lodge her complaint of being gang-raped, refused to take her to a hospital for treatment of the injuries all over her body on the plea the day being a Sunday, the hospitals were closed,” that is what the victim, a Rwandan national, deposed before a Delhi court.
The victim recorded the evidence to explain the delay in lodging an FIR as pointed by counsel for the four accused charged with gang-raping her.
But she got justice with the help of non-government organisation Don Bosco, which works for refugees. The NGO workers took her to a hospital and got her medically examined, which is the duty of the police, and called the police there to lodge an FIR. The victim was a refugee certified by the United Nations Human Rights Commission. She had come to India in 2012.
She was abducted by the four accused, who were in their twenties. A woman was also involved in her kidnapping. The woman had called her out when she was going towards Gandhi Vihar in North Delhi. While talking to her, the woman had pushed her inside a car in which the accused persons were sitting.
After raping her, the accused had thrown her out, disrobed, on the Yamuna bank in that area. A biker driving by saw her and took her to her residence in Wazirabad.
Holding the four — Deepak, Praveen, Vikas and Ashok Ekka — guilty of kidnapping, gang-rape and robbery, Additional Sessions Judge Kaveria Baweja said: “…the accused abducted the prosecutrix on December 1, 2012, and thereafter committed upon her.”
Though the court did not believe the identification of the accused by the victim in the court, it held them guilty as the forensic tests were able to match the DNA of the accused with the woman’s vaginal and cervical swabs.
The court also dismissed the argument by counsel for the accused that the victim was a sex worker, saying that “it does not confer any right upon anyone to violate her dignity…”
The court awarded ten years of imprisonment to each accused for gang-rape and kidnapping. They were also awarded different terms of punishment for other offences. However, the sentences will run concurrently.
