Court awarded life long jail to 3 rape accused

DAINK NATION BUREAU

A court here today sentenced an auto-rickshaw driver and two others to life-long jail term for raping a 22-year-old woman from Dehradun in November last year.

Additional District and Sessions Judge Poonam R Joshi held auto-rickshaw driver Mohammad Irfan and his accomplices Mohammad Garib and Kismat Ali guilty of rape and sentenced them to jail terms till their death.

They were also fined Rs 2.05 lakh each, defence counsel Dan Bahadur said.

Earlier, the charges were framed against the trio under sections 376 D (gangrape) and 506 (punishment for criminal intimidation) of the Indian Penal Code.

The DNA samples of the three had matched with the swabs taken from the victim’s body.

As per the charge-sheet filed against the trio, the victim, residing near here in Mohali had hired Irfan’s auto-rickshaw last November to return to her residence in Mohali after attending her stenography classes in Sector 37.

The auto-rickshaw had already two other men sitting in it and Irfan on the pretext of refuelling his vehicle drove towards Sector 42, the charge-sheet said, adding that after refuelling the auto, he sped to a forest area in Sector 53, where they took turn to rape her.

After raping the woman, the trio dumped her by a roadside in Sector 53.

The two men, who saw the women being forced out of the auto-rickshaw and suspected something fishy, informed the police.

The trio was arrested days after the incident on the basis of a CCTV camera footage at the petrol pump.PTI