Mumbai court convicts 4 over gang-rape of photographer
Print Edition
A MUMBAI court convicted four men yesterday over the gang-rape of a photographer on assignment in the western Indian city last year, a case that reignited nationwide anger over women’s safety.
The court found the men guilty of raping the 22-year-old in August last year at an abandoned mill compound, where she had gone to take photos with a male colleague, close to an upscale area of the financial city.
Mohammed Salim Ansari, Siraj Rehmat Khan, Vijay Mohan Jadhav and Mohammed Kasim Hafeez Shaikh, aged between 18 to 27 at the time of their arrest, were in the south Mumbai court to hear the verdict.
“All the four accused are found guilty of committing forced sex,” said Judge Shalini Phansalkar Joshi, adding that the men would be sentenced today when they could be handed life sentences.
The judge said they were also found guilty of other offenses, including having unnatural sex, showing pornography to the woman and forcing her to perform similar acts, stripping her, and destroying evidence.
The attack sparked outrage in the financial hub Mumbai, which had long been considered safer for women than the capital New Delhi, where the fatal gang-rape of a young student in December shook the nation.
Handcuffed and surrounded by police in the court, the four, wearing shirts and jeans, showed little emotion as the verdict was read out.
A fifth accused is being tried separately by a juvenile court.
Three of the men, Jadhav, Ansari and Shaikh, were also found guilty during the same hearing yesterday of gang-raping an 18-year-old telephone operator one month earlier in July last year at the same mill compound.
Another man, Mohammed Ashwaq Sheikh, was also convicted for this attack.
The operator came forward to police after the photographer’s case made headline news around the country.
Police have described the attackers as unemployed school drop-outs, while three of them live in slums close to the mills.
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