Rape: Bail for civic garden dept official

The garden superintendent (trees) of the Pune Municipal Corporation was granted bail on Friday in a rape case. Sessions judge D R Mahajan on Friday granted bail to Ashok Digambar Ghorpade (40),the garden superintendent (trees) of Pune Municipal Corporation .

The Sahakarnagar police had arrested Ghorpade on November 8 for allegedly raping and molesting a 30-year-old woman from Bibvewadi. The woman had first filed a complaint of molestation against Ghorpade on November 4. Ghorpade was arrested but released on bail. The woman then submitted a complaint of rape against Ghorpade at the Women’s Grievance Redressal Cell at the Pune police commissionerate on November 6. The Sahakarnagar police invoked the stringent section 376 (rape) of Indian Penal Code against Ghorpade and arrested him again.

The woman had said in her complaint that she came in contact with Ghorpade when she went to the PMC’s garden department office about two and a half years ago to submit an application. She said that Ghorpade had issued notices against her for cutting the branches of trees in the society. She alleged that Ghorpade developed goods relations with her,but later he started sending her obscene SMS. Then he took her to a few lodges in the city and raped her.

Ghorpade’s counsel Milind Pawar and Yogesh Pawar argued that the PMC never sent any notice to the woman. The notices were issued in the name of her husband and other members of the society. The counsels also said that the complaint lodged by the woman is false arguing that she never approached the police in the last two years.