Servant gets 10 years for attack on IPS officer's daughter in Ahmedabad

AHMEDABAD: Sonu Patel, 25, who was employed as a domestic worker at IPS officer Shamsher Singh's house in Samarpan Flats, has been sentenced to 10 years in jail for assaulting the minor daughter of another IPS officer who lived in the same building.
The offence took place on November 27, 2016, in the housing colony where about 20 IPS officers lived along with other bureaucrats and judges. Patel, who is from Chhattisgarh, was accused of sneaking into the house of the IPS officer, who is now retired, in the dead of night. He allegedly tried to strangle the officer's 17-year-old daughter, but the teen woke up and resisted the attack.
Patel tried to attack her with a knife, wounding her fingers. Patel had worn a hood during the attack to conceal his identity.
After his arrest, Patel was charged with attempted murder, house trespass after preparation for hurt and assault. Since the former IPS officer's daughter was a minor at the time, Section 8 of the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (Pocso) Act was invoked against Patel.
During the trial, assistant public prosecutor Bharat Patani examined 30 witnesses to establish Patel's guilt and additional sessions judge V A Rana sentenced him to 10-year imprisonment.
Apart from this case for the assault on the minor, Patel was booked in two other cases after his employers filed FIRs for house trespass and theft.
In 2021, a metropolitan court granted him the benefit of the doubt when he was tried for entering the dining room of IPS Singh's house, where he was employed as domestic help. The complaint was filed because of Patel's suspicious movements at night, when he was supposed to consign himself to his quarters.
However, a week later, a city sessions court sentenced him to seven years in jail for another case of theft, lurking and house trespass in the same colony in February 2017.