2 get 20 yrs in jail for 2022 gang-rape of minor Dalit girl

Pilibhit: Two men, aged 22 and 25 years, from a village under Jahanabad police station of Pilibhit district were on Monday sentenced to 20 years in jail for gang-raping a 16-year-old minor Dalit girl in 2022.The court of additional district and sessions judge (Pocso) Geeta Singh also imposed a fine of Rs 1 lakh each on the convicts, failure to pay would invite additional imprisonment of one year.The two men were known to the survivor's family. On Sept 11, 2022, they took the girl out on some pretext and gang-raped her in a sugarcane field and threatened to kill her if she disclosed the matter to anyone. They then left the girl in the field in an unconscious condition.Her father later found her and filed a police complaint, based on which an FIR was registered against the accused under IPC sections 376D (gang rape), 506 (criminal intimidation), and sections 5 and 6 (aggravated penetrative sexual assault) of the Pocso Act, and relevant sections of the SC/ST Act. The police filed separate charge sheets against the two accused on Oct 14, the same year.Public prosecutor Anil Kumar Sharma said, "The survivor affirmed the incident during her court statements recorded under section 164 of CrPC, which were corroborated by her medical examination report."District jail superintendent Rajesh Pandey told TOI, "Of the two accused, the 22-year-old man remained lodged in jail since Sept 12, 2022, the day of his arrest, while the other was granted judicial bail on Aug 21, 2025."Under IPC section 506, the court convicted the two men to three years' imprisonment and slapped a fine of Rs 10,000 each. The court directed that the sentences would run concurrently, with the term spent by the convicts in jail adjusted prior to the judgment.The court ordered the payment of the financial penalty to the survivor as compensation and directed the district legal services authority to ensure the award of the assigned reparations from the state govt under Rule 9 of Pocso Act, public prosecutor Sharma said.