Stay updated with the latest - Click here to follow us on Instagram
© The Indian Express Pvt Ltd
Tags:
Journalism of Courage
A SPECIAL court in Dindoshi acquitted alleged serial offender Rehan Qureshi in a case of sexual assault of a minor girl in 2017, on grounds including that the identification parade was not done properly. Qureshi, who is booked in over 11 cases, was facing trial before the Dindoshi court on charges including rape.
The prosecution had claimed that on June 8, 2017, the victim had gone to a general store near her home in the western suburbs of the city, to buy a compass box. When she did not reach home, her mother began looking for her. Around that time, she received a call from an unknown number that her daughter was in a lane near her school. She rushed there and found her daughter. The victim told her that she was returning home after purchasing the compass box, when a man approached her. He told her that her mother had purchased a geyser and paid him for it, and asked her to accompany him to take the product. When she followed the person, he took her to a few buildings, allegedly trying to find an isolated spot, and told her to go to the terrace of a building, to undress, claiming that there was an insect in her clothes. He then sexually assaulted her. Based on this, the police were approached and filed a case against an unknown person.
Qureshi was arrested in 2018 by the Navi Mumbai police as a breakthrough, following which he was arrested in multiple cases including the rape and murders of two minors in Nehru Nagar in 2010, which had remained undetected for years.
During the trial, Qureshi’s lawyer, Nazneen Khatri, challenged the identification carried out by the police after his arrest. She had submitted that the test identification parade in two cases was conducted at the same time, and both were in presence of the same witnesses and other procedural lapses. “…though the prosecution has proved the incident in question establishing the crime against the victim, the prosecution has however failed to prove beyond all reasonable doubt that the perpetrator of the crime was the accused,” the court said in its order on September 29.
Stay updated with the latest - Click here to follow us on Instagram
