A Gautam Buddha Nagar court on Wednesday sentenced two men to life imprisonment for raping a Dalit woman after abducting her at gunpoint and posting the video on the Internet.
Special Judge Ved Prakash Sharma found Phire and Dharmi guilty under sections 376D (gangrape), 366 (kidnapping) and 328 (causing hurt by means of poison/intoxicant with the intent to commit a crime) of the IPC and Section 3(2)5 of SC/ST Act. They have also been fined ₹10,000 each.
Meanwhile, the third accused Sateesh was acquitted for want of evidence.
Government lawyer Dharmendra Jaint said the FIR was registered on August 25, 2018, four months after the crime. “The convicts and the victim belonged to the same village in Surajpur of Greater Noida. The girl was on the way to her college, she was stopped by the main accused Phire and with the help of his friends Dharmi and Sateesh, he abducted her after administering her an intoxicant. They took her to a nearby jungle where Phire and Dharmi raped her and made a video of the incident. Sateesh was driving the vehicle.”
Mr. Jaint told The Hindu that after the incident, Phire threatened her that they would kill her family members if she disclosed about the incident. “She kept silent out of fear. However, on August 18, 2015, the accused asked her to courier a pistol and when she refused do so, they threatened to make the rape video viral. The victim’s sister found the video on the Net and brought it to her notice. “The victim, then, shared her ordeal and an FIR was filed.”
The video is a piece of vital evidence, Mr. Jaint said. “The police investigated the case and the accused admitted to their crime,” he said.
