10-year jail term for auto driver who raped disabled minor

A Mumbai court sentenced a 57-year-old auto-rickshaw driver to 10 years for raping a 17-year-old girl with intellectual impairment in 2017.

MUMBAI: A special Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) court in Dindoshi on October 22, 2024 sentenced a 57-year-old auto-rickshaw driver from Kandivali West to 10 years of imprisonment for raping a 17-year-old girl with intellectual impairment in July 2017.

10-year jail term for auto driver who raped disabled minor

The victim, a resident of Malad East, went missing on the night of July 15, 2017, and her mother filed a complaint with the Dindoshi police the next day.

According to her mother, the girl left the house at 9.30pm and slept in an auto-rickshaw parked near Jogeshwari civic hospital. She then went to Borivali and asked an auto rickshaw driver to take her home. As per the prosecution, he handed her over to another auto driver, who checked into Green Star Hotel in Malad West with her where he allegedly raped her. He then left her at Ganesh Nagar Naka, Kandivali. Here, she met a third auto driver who took her to Mith Chowki, Malad West, where she spent the night of July 17 sleeping in a parked auto rickshaw. On July 18 noon, she walked home and was taken to J J Hospital for medical examination.

The defence submitted that the prosecution was full of contradictions and inconsistencies. They argued over the lack of clarity to the term used by the victim to describe the assault. The advocate for the first auto driver submitted that the prosecution did not have any proof to verify the girl’s intellectual impairment.

Special judge Nandkishor More observed that there is proof that the second driver, the main accused, checked into the hotel with the victim and raped her. The court held that the versions of the mother and the victim is consistent and reliable. Adding that there is no cogent evidence to prove the accusations against the first driver, the court noted that the second auto driver was clearly the perpetrator of the crime and convicted him for kidnapping and raping the minor.