Shakti Mills rape convicts don’t deserve to be ‘assimilated’ in society: HC

The Bombay High Court on Thursday commuted to life sentence the death penalty handed to three convicts in the gang rape of a 22yearold photojournalist inside the defunct Shakti Mills compound in 2013 saying that they ldquodeserve imprisonment for life to repent the offence committed by them as death puts an end to the concept of repentancerdquo The convicts do not deserve to ldquoassimilaterdquo with society it said The HC has said that the convicts shall not be entitled to any remissions including parole and furloughIn its verdict the HC bench said ldquoThe Shakti Mill gangrape case has shocked the conscience of society A rape victim suffers not just physically but mentally as well It is a violation of human rights But only public outcry cannot be taken into account A death sentence is only an exception Judgment should not be guided by public outcryrdquoldquoDeath puts an end to the concept of repentance It cannot be said that the accused deserved only the death penalty They deserved religious imprisonment for life to repent for the offence committed by them Not to assimilate in society There is no scope of reformationrdquo it added The three men had been convicted in 2014 and given the death penalty by the sessions court They were also found guilty of raping a telephone operator at the spot in MahalaxmiForensic experts look for evidence at Shakti Mills File picThe crime shook the nation after a 22yearold photojournalist was brought to Jaslok Hospital on August 22 2013 The woman had been tied up beaten and raped by five people On September 3 a telephone operator approached the police complaining that she too had been gangraped inside Shakti MillsTwenty teams of cops from 16 police stations and officers from 12 Crime Branch units were pressed to crack the case Within 65 hours all five perpetrators were arrested The photojournalist identified her attackersmdashVijay Jadhav then aged 19 Mohamed Kasim Hafiz Sheikh alias Kasim Bengali 21 Mohammed Salim Ansari 28 Siraj Rehman Khan alias Sirju 24 and Chand Shaikh Those involved in the assault on the telephone operator were identified as Vijay Jadhav Mohamed Kasim Hafiz Sheikh Mohammed Salim Ansari Mohammed Ashfaq Sheikh 26 and an unnamed minorOn April 4 2014 the sessions court pronounced the death penalty for Jadhav Kasim Bangali and Ansari treating them as repeat offenders Last month a division bench of Justices Sadhana S Jadhav and Prithviraj K Chavan of the high court began hearing the death confirmation reference plea by the state government and appeals by the convicts against the trial court order Milind Bharambe joint commissioner crime said ldquoWe havenrsquot received the court order copy yet We will study the verdict given by the honourable court and then will take a final call on itrdquoHow the convicts were tracked downPolice Inspector Manohar Dhanawade was the investigating officer in the photojournalist case and Sanjay Nikumbe in the telephone operatorrsquos case Nikumbe said ldquoWe had no names or any technical evidence in the case The investigation started in a classic way ie from preparing the sketch As soon as one accused was identified we managed to get him overnight And once we got the breakthrough the rest of the accused were also caughtrdquoThe lane in Mahalaxmi where Shakti Mills stands File picNikumbe who is now the senior inspector of Kherwadi police station said ldquoWhen we were searching for Ashfaq Sheikh we learnt that he had an affair with a bar girl We kept a watch on her and found Sheikh was hiding in Surat and used to call the woman from a PCO When Sheikh ran out of money he came to Girgaum Chowpatty to take money from her and was caughtrdquo In the case of Mohammad Qasim Sheikh who lived at Dhobighat the police learnt that he often visited Nair hospital and slept on a bench Seeing the cops he went to the roof to sleep and was nabbed from thereHow the defence mounted its effortsAdvocate Yug Chaudhry who represented the convicts said ldquoDuring the argument I put forth my point before High Court and said that section 376 E a repeat rape offender will have to be imprisoned for the rest of his life or sentenced to death of IPC does not apply in the case And the court got convinced So the conviction under section 376 E will not sustainrdquoHe said ldquoSecondly I said that the trial in the case was unconstitutional and I also submitted a few instances to prove my points Here also the HC got convincedrdquo The lawyer added ldquoAnd lastly I said that capital punishment cannot be awarded to them because the conviction under section 376 E cannot sustainrdquo Public Prosecutor Sahil Deepak Salvi told midday ldquoThe sessions court had convicted the three accused under Section 376 E of the IPC and sentenced them to death The High Court in its order has said that they were found guilty of the same sentence at the same time Therefore punishment cannot be imposed under this sectionrdquo20No of teams of cops that had worked to arrest the rapists