Man sentenced to 20 years in prison for raping an underage girl

Mumbai: A special POCSO court on Tuesday sentenced a 26-year-old man to 20 years imprisonment for the abduction and gang rape of a 14-year-old girl in Ghatkopar in 2019. The second accused was a minor whose case was separated and tried in the juvenile court.

On January 25, 2019, the girl disappeared, after which her mother filed a complaint. The minor claimed that her mother had beaten her because she had not cooked food or done any housework. Under the pretext of buying soap, she then left the house and hid in the public toilet.

In the meantime, she was seen by one of the accused who lived nearby and was forced to go with him to Ghatkopar. There, the girl says, the accused sexually abused her and when she resisted, they inflicted burns on her leg. They also threw clothes at her and gave her the clothes of one of the accused’s wife.

In her statement, which was recorded mostly in question-and-answer format, the victim said that she was raped alternately by two accused and kept there for five to six days.

The accused told the neighbours that he loved the girl and wanted to marry her and eventually fled the house, a witness told the court. Later, the accused’s third friend came there and tried to rescue the girl. He informed the victim’s parents, who rescued the girl on January 31.

The family later registered the case at Shivaji Nagar police station. The prosecution relied heavily on the statements of the victim, her mother and a doctor who confirmed that the girl had been sexually abused. Besides, the statement of the woman in whose house the accused had kept the girl also helped the prosecution to corroborate the case.