Sonepat varsity rape case: Not only abused, victim even denied basic dignity of living creature, says HC

The high court said that the girl was noosed and the dilemma that she was facing was not only to keep the noose loose but also to conceal it

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Sonepat varsity rape case: Not only abused,victim even denied basic dignity of living creature, says HC

The victim of the 2015 Sonepat varsity rape case was not only abused but denied even basic dignity of a living creature, compassion and courtesy, the Punjab and Haryana high court has observed.

In the detailed judgment, the high court bench of justice TS Dhindsa and justice Pankaj Jain said that the girl was noosed and the dilemma that she was facing was not only to keep the noose loose but also to conceal it.

“Whole of the time she was carrying the burden of the diabolical designs of the accused,” it further recorded.

It was on Friday that the high court upheld the 20-year jail term of two former students of Sonepat’s OP Jindal Global University in the 2015 case of gangrape and blackmail of a junior BBA student of the same varsity. The court acquitted the third former student of the charges.

A trial court on May 24, 2017 had awarded 20-year jail term each to main accused Hardik Sikri and his friend Karan Chhabra for gangraping and blackmailing the girl student, which has been upheld. The third, Vikas Garg, was handed seven-year jail term. But he was acquitted of charges by the high court on Friday.

They had approached the high court in September 2017. The girl had accused the three final-year law students, who are from Delhi, of raping her from the time she joined the university in August 2013. The FIR was registered on April 11, 2015.

The court found that the girl was at the command of Hardik, who used to blackmail her. “At times, she had to seek his permission even for having dinner or even to drink water,” it said, taking note of WhatsApp chats.

The appellants had time and again referred to the chats of the girl with other boys to put the victim in dock and termed her as a consenting partner and “woman of easy virtue”.

However, the court said, the girl comes out to be a person who may be termed as “open and extrovert but definitely can’t be said to be a fibster.”

The prosecution heavily relied on WhatsApp Chats, but convicts preferred not to rebut the same and had also accused her of selective leak. However, the court said, if the accused were in possession of the best piece of evidence, but withheld, the presumption would be that the evidence if produced would be “unfavourable” to convicts.

With respect to Vikas Garg, the court said that neither the testimony of the girl showed that there was any allegation with respect to conspiracy between Vikas and the other two accused nor does it could be inferred from the WhatsApp Chat.

Case of ‘submission’ but not ‘consent’

The court further said that it is evident that it is a case of ‘submission’ by the girl. “Her silence or her caving in to the demands of the accused cannot be termed as consent,” the court said, referring to the WhatsApp chats, which, the court termed “most material evidence” on record related to the relationship between the parties.

“Any resistance on part of the prosecutrix was chewed-out by the accused Hardik even more severely. In such a situation it can’t be said that she was a consenting party,” it said, adding that from the conjoint reading of the testimony of the girl before the court and the WhatsApp chat, her version gets fully corroborated. ENDS