Two years on, Navlakhi rape-accused still under trial

Vadodara: The latest case of “sexual assault” on the 18-year-old Navsari girl at Vaccine Institute ground brings back bad memories of the gang rape on a 14-year-old girl at Navlakhi Compound exactly two years ago. Once again, a question mark is put on Sanskarinagari’s ‘safe city for women’ tag.

Recently, a rape accused in Surat was sentenced within a month of the crime he committed, while the two balloon sellers – Kishan Mathasuriya and Jaso Solanki – who are in jail for the Navalakhi Compound crime are still under trial.

Sources close to the case said that the duo’s trial is at evidence stage as 38 witnesses of the prosecution have been examined so far. The prosecution had a list of 98 witnesses for examination, but most of the names have been dropped.

The two investigating officers, one of whom is the assistant commissioner of crime branch, will be examined next. After their examination, if the defence will have any witnesses then they will be examined and after the final arguments of both sides, the court will pronounce its order.

The heinous crime had taken place on November 28 night in 2019 and police filed a chargesheet on January 22 last year. The case trial began five days later on January 27.

Maximum delay was due to the pandemic and the lockdown as the courts were only taking up urgent matters for several months. During the course of trial, the defence lawyers used different tactics by submitting three applications. One of the applications was regarding investigation of the place of offence by the court which was rejected. Later, another application was done to make the survivor’s fiance a co-accused, which was also turned down and the accused were fined.

The last application was done to re-examine the girl, her mother and the doctor who did her medical check-up, which too was turned down.