Mumbai: 10-year-jail for two jawans for teen’s gang-rape in 2010

MUMBAI: The Bombay HC has upheld the 10-year prison term given to two Army jawans for the gang rape of a 19-year-old girl in Pune in 2010. Justice Revati Dere dismissed the appeals filed by Samunder Singh and Rajnish Kumar against their conviction.



Singh and Kumar, attached to 17 Rajputana Rifles and residing in the Aundh camp area, had beaten the girl's boyfriend unconscious and raped her on April 7, 2010. Justice Dere observed that there was “overwhelming evidence” against the duo, including the statements of the girl and her boyfriend as well as DNA and chemical analyser reports.

The girl had gone to meet her boyfriend in Pimple Saudagar area, when Singh and Kumar had accosted them. Singh and Kumar claimed they were falsely implicated as they had objected to the girl and the boy behaving indecently in public. Their lawyers said there was a delay in lodging the FIR—it was registered on April 8, a day after the incident.

The court rejected both arguments. “The survivor was a young girl aged 19 years, coming from a lower strata of the society having gone to meet her boyfriend, without informing at home, when she was sexually assaulted. Under these circumstances, non-disclosure to her parents when she returned home, would not lead to an inference that no such incident took place. It appears that it is only when the accused tried calling her again, that she gathered courage and went to the police station,” said the judge. The court also said they had no reason to falsely implicate the accused whom they had never seen earlier.

The defence lawyers tried to raise doubts about the crime by pointing out that the girl had disclosed that she had sexual intercourse with her boyfriend after she was raped and before she lodged the FIR. “Merely because the survivor admitted in her cross-examination that she had physical relations with her boyfriend prior to lodging of the complaint would not discredit her testimony,” the judge ruled.