Mumbai gangrape: 'Juvenile' accused to undergo second bone test

Two days after the Mumbai police said that one of the accused in the Shakti Mill compound gangrape case was a minor and sent him to a remand home in Dongri, the state home department has decided to conduct another bone test on him to resolve the confusion over the accused’s age, reported DNA.

On Thursday, all the five accused had undergone bone ossification tests to determine their exact age. A senior officer of the Mumbai Crime Branch told The Hindu , “As per the documents collected during investigation, he is a minor and being treated such. If further medical examination results reveal otherwise, he will be treated as an adult."

The remand copy presented in a local court said that the mother of the accused claimed that he is a minor and presented certain documents during the investigation.

CNN-IBN reported that the brother of one of the accused has produced a birth certificate as proof of age.

Two of the five accused had earlier claimed that they were minors, however, the police has not named who.

But days before the Mumbai police confirmed that one of the accused is a minor, Mumbai Police Commissioner Satyapal Singh had told the media that none of the accused in the Mumbai gangrape case was a juvenile.

“There are no juveniles among the accused. All are uneducated, jobless and had earlier indulged in theft… all the accused are born and brought up in Mumbai,” he said .

All the five accused - Mohammed Kasim Hafiz Shaikh alias Kasim Bengali, Siraj Rehman Khan, Salim Ansari, Chand Babu Sattar Shaikh, Vijay Jadhav - have been booked under various sections of IPC such as 376(D) (rape), 342 (wrongful confinement), 506(2) (criminal intimidation) and 34 (common intention).

The 23-year-old photojournalist was gangraped in the premises of the defunct Shakti Mills Compound near Mahalaxmi station. The survivor, accompanied by a male colleague, had gone to Shakti Mills to shoot pictures for an official assignment on 22 August.