Gujarat high court on Saturday confirmed the conviction and the sentencing of five in the Patan gang rape case while reduced the sentence of one of the convicts.
In a case of rape of an 18-year-old Dalit girl by her teachers, the high court ruled that a gruesome crime had been committed on the girl that traumatised her to the extent that she suffered from frequent bouts of fainting. So, this was certainly a case of crime where no leniency was justified.
After hearing the appeal against the sentence by the six convicts, a bench, comprising Justice Akil Kureshi and Justice ZK Saiyed, confirmed the sentence of life imprisonment given to Kiran Patel, Ashwin Parmar, Suresh Patel, Mahendra Prajapati and Manish Prajapati.
In case of Atul Patel, the sixth convict in the crime, the HC observed that since he was engaged in only one crime and not involved in the conspiracy or the act of gang rape, he was charged under Section 376 and sentenced to 10 years’ rigorous imprisonment. In 2009, a special fast track court had declared all the six guilty and sentenced them for life.
Meanwhile, Ashwin Parmar, one of the convicts present in the court when the order was being announced, said he had been framed.
“I did not commit any crime. In fact, no crime had been committed. We have been framed. I have appealed for a narco test on me. But it has been rejected,” he said while being escorted to jail from the courtroom by the police.
In 2007 and 2008, a Dalit girl was repeatedly raped over a period of four months by her professors at the government primary teachers’ training college in Patan. The victim is one of the five children of a landless agricultural labourer, who had sent his daughter to that college with the dream of making her a teacher.
The state government had also instituted a panel, headed by Patan district collector Vinod Rao, to probe the matter. Justice SC Srivastave of a special fast track court found them guilty and sentenced them to life in 2009.
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