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Court gives life imprisonment to 5 for mother-daughter gang rape on NH-91
Special Pocso judge OP Verma convicted the five under the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act on Saturday
MEERUT: Five men who intercepted a car on National Highway 91 and raped a woman and her 14-year-old daughter in July 2016 were sentenced to life imprisonment by a special Bulandshahr court on Monday.
Special Pocso Judge OP Verma convicted the five under the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act on Saturday.
The five convicts -- Jubair alias Sunil alias Parvez, Sajid (both residents of village Itkhari Binaura, police station Tirwa, district Kannauj), Dharmveer alias Raka alias Jitender, Naresh alias Sandeep alias Rahul (both residents of village Geshanpur, police station Mohammadabad, district Farrukhabad), and Sunil alias Sagar (resident of village Banwoi, Azadnagar, police station Mohammadabad) – belong to the notorious Bawariya gang.
Their sixth associate and gang leader, Salim alias Beena alias Diwanji, died during the trial. Two other suspects were killed in separate encounters with the Haryana Police and the Noida STF in unrelated cases.
The crime took place on the night of July 28-29, 2016, when a family of six from Noida was headed to their ancestral village in Shahjahanpur to attend a ritual in connection with a death.
Near the Dostpur flyover in the Dehat Kotwali area, the accused forced their vehicle to stop by hurling an iron object at it. When the car stopped, the gang took the family hostage – including the teenage daughter, her mother and father, her aunt and uncle, and a cousin – and dragged them to a nearby field across the road.
The male members were tied up, and the teenager and her mother were raped. The accused looted valuables from the family before fleeing the scene.
The Central Bureau of Investigation *CBI) took over the probe on orders of the Allahabad High Court amid public outrage over the crime and the state police’s inability to arrest the real culprits.
The first chargesheet was filed against Jubair, Salim, and Sajid, followed by a supplementary one against Dharmveer, Naresh, and Sunil.
After the judge pronounced the verdict, the culprits claimed they were being punished despite their innocence.
The victims’ families said they were disappointed that the accused were given the death penalty but welcomed the verdict as a step toward justice after nearly a decade.
