Dhaula Kuan gang rape: Life term to five upheld

NEW DELHI: The Delhi

high court

earlier this week upheld

life term

awarded to

five

men in the 2010 Dhaula Kuan gang rape case of a 30-year-old BPO woman executive.

A bench of justices Vipin Sanghi and P S Teji found the testimony of the woman — hailing from northeast — to be “natural, reliable, credible and trustworthy, free from any kind of glitches” and noted that “she in simple language narrated the incident at the time of her deposition before the trial court”.

The court said that not only was the survivor’s testimony sufficient, but it was also corroborated by her friend and other evidence such as medical and scientific. It dismissed the appeals filed by the five convicts Usman, Shamshad, Shahid, Iqbal and Kamruddin, who were all residents of Mewat in Haryana.

The bench noted that from the woman’s testimony, the prosecution could establish that on the night of November 23-24, 2010, the five men kidnapped her from south Delhi's Moti Bagh in a pick-up van and raped her in the moving vehicle. She was eventually dumped in Mongolpuri after a few hours.

The incident took place when she and her friend were returning home from their office in Gurugram. Upholding the trial court verdict, the bench said the trial court found the woman’s evidence credible and trustworthy and the high court finds no reason to take a different view.

The five men were convicted and sentenced by the trial court in October 2014, with the judge observing that the the offence demonstrated that the five married men, who also have children, “were on the prowl, looking for a prey to satiate their sexual lust”. It had termed them “psychopaths” who should be kept away from the society as long as possible.

The five were held guilty for offences of gangrape, abduction, criminal intimidation and common intention. While challenging the trial court verdict, the convicts had argued they were falsely implicated. However, HC saw no merit in these claims noting that Usman and Shamshad were identified by the woman during their test identification parade and there was other corroborative evidence against co-accused Shahid, Iqbal and Kamruddin.


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