Rape charge fake, accused acquitted

Additional Sessions Judge KU Chandiwal on Tuesday acquitted Ravindra Waghri and his father Bharat in a case of rape against a minor. The minor, Amrita (name changed) of Dharavi, had filed a police complaint in 1996 alleging her kidnapping and rape by her two neighbours and their family. This was done just to help her father settle scores with the neighbours.

On October 6, 1996, Amrita’s father had lodged a complaint against the accused, Ravindra Waghri, his father Bharat and another accused Bhavesh. The report stated that Bhavesh’s sister Poonam enticed Amrita and the family took her to Adnar where Bhavesh allegedly raped her four times on one afternoon and continued to do so for the next three days from October 2 to 5.

However, Amrita’s evidence in court was to the contrary. She admitted that she had run away from home to escape her mother’s thrashings as she had failed in the school exams and that Poonam assisted her. She further said that Bhavesh had slept with her during her sojourn in Gujarat. She said Ravindra raped her in Mumbai daily for 45 days between July 20 and September 5, 1996, months before she left with his family for Gujarat.

Bhavesh died before the trial began. The case therefore stood abated against him.

The prosecution’s case was riddled with these and other contradictions and ‘failed to establish the offence’. Defence counsel Narayan Kumar said, “The evidence we led for the defence proved that the entire complaint was a ruse to stop the accused from demolishing a toilet that the Waghri’s had built behind their home,”