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Two women get 10-yr term for abetting rape
New Delhi: A city court sentenced two 55-year-old women to 10 years in jail for abetting the rape of a Mumbai-based woman who was trying to return home from Delhi after missing a train.
Additional Sessions Judge Rakesh Tewari threw out the leniency plea filed by the convicts citing their age, noting that the women — Ranjit Kaur and Neelam — were expecting mercy on the grounds that they had daughters of a marriageable age but had acted as “flesh hunters” in the case of the woman who was younger than their daughters.
ASJ Tewari went on to challenge the common perception that only men were involved in cases of s*xual assault, saying the present case dented the prejudice.
“If the person (who assured the victim of help) had been male, he would not have done what was done by these two female convicts, giving support to the irony that it is not always the male who is against the interest and dignity of females, but it is the female who is the enemy of the female, as is evident in the present case,” said ASJ Tewari.
The court also sentenced co-accused Raju to a 10-year jail term for raping the victim after she was confined by Kaur in her house in a West Delhi locality.
According to the FIR registered at the Nangloi police station, the victim — then 21— was on her way back to Mumbai from Jammu and Kashmir via Delhi on June 6, 2004, and had missed her train. While she was seeking help from people at the New Delhi railway station, she met Kaur, who told her she was also on her way to Mumbai the same day and offered her a ride. The woman agreed and got into the car. Later, Kaur offered her tea laced with sedatives.
When she regained consciousness, she found herself locked up in Kaur’s house where Raju raped her at Kaur’s instance. The two also took her to Neelam’s house in Rohini, where she was raped again, police said. After a fortnight, the woman managed to escape and lodged an FIR.
During the trial, the convicts tried to cast aspersion on the woman’s character, but the judge dismissed their arguments.
“From the evidence on record, particularly the woman’s deposition, it has been proved beyond doubt that she fell into the trap of flesh hunters by relying on the accused women to take her back to Mumbai. The accused, however, cheated and s*xually exploited her by facilitating her rape by the co-accused,” the judge noted.
Original Source : https://www.indianexpress.com/news/two-women-get-10yr-term-for-abetting-rape/761931/
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