Deploring the “gravity” and “odious” nature of the crime, a Delhi court has jailed a man for 30 years for confining a woman for nine months, repeatedly raping her along with his two associates and beating her regularly.
Relying on various evidence including the DNA report, Additional Sessions Judge Virender Bhat sentenced Shiva, a native of Uttar Pradesh, to a 30-year jail term after holding him guilty of gang-rape, rape, wrongfully confining the 30-year-old woman, hurting her and then criminally intimidating her.
The court specifically noted that Shiva will undergo a 10-year imprisonment for rape, criminal intimidation, wrongful confinement and causing hurt and then 20 years’ rigorous imprisonment for the offence of gang-rape.
“...There is no escape from the conclusion that the prosecutrix was not a consenting party either to the sexual intercourse with the accused or with other persons, who had ravished her on March 22, 2013, at the instance of the accused.”
“The prosecution has also established that the accused had been giving beatings to the prosecutrix regularly and issuing threats to her not to disclose the incidents of forcible sexual intercourse to anybody else,” the court said.
The other two associates of Shiva could not be arrested.
Even as the court held the man guilty, it rejected the woman’s claim that she was kidnapped by Shiva, who was known to her, from a train when she was travelling with her husband and children from Kanpur to Rae Bareli.
“I find it very difficult to believe that a grown-up lady can be taken away from a crowded train compartment in such a fashion. Further, it would not be possible for a person to carry a lady in an unconscious state from a railway station between Kanpur and Rai Bareli up to Delhi without being noticed by any person including police officials,” ASJ Bhat said.
It, however, added that merely because the evidence led by the woman indicates that she may have gone to Shiva voluntarily does not necessarily imply that she had gone there to enjoy sexual relations with him.
The court also imposed a fine of Rs.55,000 on Shiva.
According to the prosecution, the woman and Shiva knew each other. On June 15, 2012, she along with her husband and children was going in a train from Kanpur to Rae Bareli. When she went to toilet, she found him there.
He made her unconscious and took her to a room in Delhi where he raped her for nine months and also did not allow her to go anywhere. Shiva used to rape the woman and commit unnatural sex after administering “intoxicating medicine” to her, the police added. On March 22, 2013, Shiva brought his two associates to his room and after increasing the volume of television, they all gang-raped her and threatened her not to disclose the incident to anyone, or else she would be killed, it said.
The next day, the woman managed to escape from the house. She reached a nearby railway station and made a call to the police.
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