Gujarat High Court (HC),on Saturday,pronounced its judgment in the sensational Patan Gangrape Case and confirmed life imprisonment awarded to five accused teachers by a fast-track court while reducing the sentence of life imprisonment of one accused teacher to 10 years' rigorous imprisonment. A division bench of HC comprising of Justices Akil Kureshi and Z K Saiyed passed a judgment in this regard while acting on a group of petitions moved by the accused teachers and the state government.The five teachers whose sentence of life imprisonment has been confirmed by the HC have been identified as Manish Parmar,Kiran Patel,Ashwin Parmar,Mahendra Prajapati and Suresh Patel. Whereas,the fifth accused whose sentence of life imprisonment has been reduced to 10 years' imprisonment has been identified as Atul Patel.Special Public Prosecutor in the case anisha Lavkumar said that the court has confirmed the sentence of all the accused except for Atul Patel whose sentence has been reduced to 10 years' rigorous imprisonment.Atul Patel's counsel Rajkumar Chaumal said that his sentence has been reduced by the court while holding that he did not commit gang-rape and had committed rape on a solitary occasion.The case pertains to the gang-rape of a dalit girl student by her teachers at the hostel of Primary Teacher's Certificate (PTC) college in Patan district in 2008 which witnessed large scale protest. The girl was gang-raped by six of her teachers at different times and the issue became quite controversial after the girl fainted in the prayer hall of the college on January 31,2008.On February 4 then,college girls had complained to the college authorities about the accused teachers. But,when no action was taken against them,the girls and their parents vandalized the college and attacked the accused. An FIR was registered on the same day by Patan police.The then education minister,Anandiben Patel,was representing the Patan district at the state assembly. The case was investigated by Gujarat CID (Crime) and at one point even the then Governor of Gujarat,Nawal Kishore Sharma,expressed concern over the delay in filing chargesheet in the case and he also suggested to conduct trial of the case in a fast-track court.Subsequently,the trial was conducted on fast-track basis in the court of the then Patan's Principal District Judge,Swarnlata Srivastava,who later on also gave judgments in the 2002 Sardarpura and Dipda Darwaja massacres of Mehsana district.The special fast-track court had - on March 6,2009 pronounced its judgment in the case and convicted all the six accused teachers to life imprisonment and also ordered them to pay compensation of Rs 10,000 each to the victim. While convicting the six of gang-rape and alligned offences,the court had acquitted them from the provisions of the Scheduled Caste & Scheduled Tribe (Prevention of Atrocities) Act popularly known as the Atrocity Act.Following the judgment,the six convicts had moved appeals against their conviction. State Government had also moved an appeal against the acquittal of the accused teachers from the provisions of the Atrocity Act.Since none of the convicts were granted bail by the courts,they had sought expeditious hearing of their appeals. And accordingly,the HC bench was hearing their appeals on day-to-day basis.Pronouncing its judgment,the court confirmed the sentence of the five accused teachers and reduced sentence of one. The court,meanwhile,upheld the compensation amount of Rs 10,000 each to be paid to the victim by the convicts and acquittal of the accused from the charges under the Atrocity Act.
