Shakti Mills gangrape: 3 repeat offenders get death penalty

Mumbai: In a historic judgement, a Mumbai sessions court today sentenced three men convicted of raping a photojournalist in Shakti mills to death after they were found guilty of having participated in multiple instances of gangrape.

Sentencing the three men to death, the court said that it had to do justice to the society.

Speaking to the press, special public prosecutor Ujjwal Nikam said that the prosecution asked for the death penalty because they were repeat offenders and there was no scope for reformation.

“One of the convicts told the girl while raping her that he had done this quite a number of times, but no one caught him,” Nikam said.

“We asked for death penalty on the grounds that when they were juveniles they were convicted for theft,” he added. Nikam also said that the photojournalist had begged them to spare her but they made fun of her after raping her.

Himanshu Roy, who is the former head of the Crime Branch of the Mumbai Police and led the probe into the incident, said that the verdict would send a strong message to criminals.

“The court has given a distinct, definite and deterrent verdict,” he said.

In a landmark verdict, this is the first court to convict and sentence the three men under section 376E of the Indian Penal Code, which invokes the death penalty for repeat offenders.

On 20 March, 2014 the court convicted five persons — Vijay Jadhav, Qasim Sheikh alias Bengali, Salim Ansari, Mohammad Ashfak Shaikh and Siraj Sheikh — for gangraping a telephone operator and a photojournalist last year.

Of the five, three — Jadhav, Bengali and Ansari — were involved in both cases, and the court was considering sentenced the three to death under section 376E.

The accused recently approached the Bombay High court seeking relief from being charged under the section However, the High Court refused to interfere with the sessions court’s decision.

The amendment to the IPC was one of the criminal amendments enacted after the 2013 Delhi gangrape.

Investigations had revealed that the the accused had used the deserted mill compound on several occasions and had raped multiple women in the past. The accused had developed a modus operandi to replicate rapes ensuring their victims did not speak up after they were violated.

The court is yet to decide on the quantum of punishment in the case pertaining to the gangrape of a photojournalist. The three men have already been sentenced to life imprisonment in the both cases.

The 22-year-old photo journalist of a magazine was gangraped by Jadhav, Bengali, Ansari, Rehman and a minor when she had gone to the Shakti Mills compound in the Central Mumbai with a male colleague on an assignment on 22 August, 2013. Shortly after the story of the gangrape broke, the telephone operator came forward and alleged that she too was gangraped and brutalised by three of the five men in the same compound.