Nayana Pujari rape-murder case: Trial court finds three guilty, to pronounce quantum of punishment tomorrow

Pujari, an engineer with a software company in Kharadi, was abducted on October 7, 2009.

One of the accused in the Nayana Pujari gangrape and murder case.

A Pune trial court on Monday found the three accused in the gangrape and murder of techie Nayana Pujari guilty, seven years after the case first came to light.

Special judge judge L L Yenkar, the fourth judge to hear the case since the trial commenced in 2011, pronounced Yogesh Raut, Mahesh Thakur and Vishwas Kadam guilty under sections 376 (rape) , 302 (murder), 120B(criminal conspiracy) 361 (kidnapping) along with several other counts of Indian Penal Code.

Judge Yenkar will pronounce the quantum of punishment on Tuesday after hearing arguments from the prosecution and defence lawyers. Pujari, an engineer with a software company in Kharadi, was abducted on October 7, 2009. Her body was recovered from the Zarewadi forests in Khed taluka on October 9, 2009. The husband of the victim, Abhijit Pujari, said that the only fitting punishment for the convicts would be death penalty. “They should be hanged,” he said. Pujari had accompanied by Nayana’s younger sister to the courtroom to hear the verdict.

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Raut, who worked as a cab driver for Synechron, the software firm, and Chaudhari worked as a security guard for the firm. Chaudhari later become an approver. Raut had fled from the police custody in 2011 and was only caught in May 2013, after the investigation intensified following Delhi gangrape case.

During the final arguments, Special Public Prosecutor Harshad Nimbalkar claimed to have established a complete chain of circumstances that led to the crime and hoped that the court will pronounce the accused guilty and award them the highest punishment for the gruesome crime. The prosecution and the defence examined 37 and 13 witnesses, respectively, in support of their case. The case has been heard by four judges in last six years.

On the day of the incident, instead of dropping Pujari home, they drove the cab towards Rajgurunagar. After picking up two other friends, they stopped the vehicle at a desolate spot on the road and sexually assaulted her. They also withdrew a total of Rs 61,000 from her bank account using her debit card. Later they proceeded to kill her by launching a savage attack with stones and strangulating her with a scarf. During the course of the investigation, it was found that the accused had committed similar crimes in the past. A year prior to the Pujari incident, the accused also kidnapped, raped and killed a vegetable vendor from the city.

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