A Delhi court has sent a man to 30 years in prison for repeatedly sexually assaulting a woman, confining her for nine months and gangraping her with his two associates. The court held Uttar Pradesh resident Shiva guilty of gangrape, rape, wrongfully confining the 30-year-old woman, causing hurt and criminal intimidation, and said, “The crime committed by the convict was intensely grave, odious and serious in nature.” The court said Shiva will first undergo imprisonment of 10 years for rape, criminal intimidation, wrongful confinement and causing hurt, followed by 20 years rigorous imprisonment for gangrape. “There is no escape from the conclusion that the prosecutrix was not a consenting party either to the sexual intercourse with the accused or with other persons, who had ravished her on March 22, 2013 at the instance of the accused,” the court said. “The prosecution has also established that the accused had been giving beatings to the prosecutrix regularly and issuing threats to her not to disclose the incidents of forcible sexual intercourse to anybody else. However, there is no evidence on record to support the charge under Section 377 (unnatural offence) of the IPC framed against the accused,” Additional Sessions Judge Virender Bhat said. The court also imposed a fine of Rs 55,000 on Shiva. The two associates of Shiva could not be arrested. The court, however, rejected the woman’s claim that she was kidnapped by Shiva, who was known to her, while she was travelling in a train with her husband and children from Kanpur to Raibareilly. “I find it very difficult to believe that a grown up woman can be taken away from a crowded train compartment in such a fashion. Further, it would not be possible for a person to carry a woman in an unconscious state from a railway station between Kanpur and Raibareilly up to Delhi without being noticed by any person,” the judge said. At the same time, it said merely because the evidence led by the woman indicates that she may have gone to Shiva voluntarily does not necessarily imply and construe that she had gone there to “enjoy sexual relations with him”. The court observed that there was a possibility that the woman left her husband and children due to “something else, may be marital discord”. The prosecution said on June 15, 2012, she along with her husband and children was going in a train from Kanpur to Raibareilly and that when she went to the toilet, she found Shiva there. The prosecution alleged that Shiva would rape the woman after administering an “intoxicating medicine” to her, police said. On March 22, 2013, Shiva brought his two associates to his room and they gangraped her. The prosecution said the three told her not to disclose the incident to anyone, or else she would be killed. The next day, the woman managed to escape the house. She reached a nearby railway station and made a call to police. Shiva was arrested by officers of Dwarka Sector-23 police station. The court, while holding Shiva guilty in the case, relied on the DNA test reports which proved that she was raped by him and two others. The judge refused to show any leniency towards Shiva. “It is apparent that Shiva found a soft target in the woman as she had come to him on her own after leaving her husband and children,” the court said.
