Mumbai
Updated : Nov 01, 2014, 06:20 AM IST
The Bombay high court will hear on December 5 the confirmation of death sentences awarded to the three convicts — Vijay Jadhav, 19, Kasim Bengali, 21 and Mohammed Salim Ansari, 28 — of the Shakti Mills gang-rape case.
A division bench of Justices VK Tahilramani and AK Menon refused to club the confirmation petition filed by the state government along with the petition filed by the convicts challenging section 376(e) of the Indian Penal Code which provides for the maximum death penalty for repeat offence.
Public prosecutor Sandeep Shinde informed the judges that the petition by convicts challenging the invocation of amended section 376(e) on them by the prosecution was still pending. He requested the court to club the matters.
The judges, however, said that they were not inclined to club the matters. They also clarified that they will go ahead with the confirmation petition irrespective of the decision on the convicts' petition challenging the amended section.
The prosecution had added the charge 376(e) after they were convicted in a gang-rape case of a telephone operator in July 2013. The amended charge provides for maximum sentence of death in the case of a repeat offence of rape.
A confirmation petition was filed in the HC by the state government on April 15 seeking that the death sentence of the three convicts who are common in both the gang rapes that took place in Shakti Mills in 2013 be confirmed.
As per the law, a death sentence awarded by the trial court has to be confirmed by the high court.
On April 4 this year, the sessions court convicted Jadhav, Bengali, Ansari and Siraj Khan for raping a photojournalist on the deserted premises of the defunct Shakti Mills in central Mumbai on August 22, 2013.
Siraj was awarded life imprisonment. The other three were awarded death penalty by the sessions court under the provisions of section 376 (e) of IPS.
Jadhav, Bengali and Ansari were convicted on March 20 and sentenced to life imprisonment by the court for gang rape of a telephone operator at the same premises in July, 2013.
Since it was their second conviction in a gang-rape case, the prosecution sought death penalty for the trio by framing an additional charge of repeat offence under section 376 (e). The section was introduced in the IPC after the December 2012 Delhi gang rape.
This is the first time the section has been applied.
The sessions court, while awarding the death, had observed that the offence was a pre-planned one and the accused showed no mercy to the victim and had no remorse afterwards.
"Such offences must not be tolerated and there should be zero tolerance to such crimes. If leniency is shown it will be misplaced sympathy and travesty of justice," the court had said.