HC upholds life terms for 3 in 2014 minor rape-murder case

The bench noted that the circumstances formed a complete chain of circumstances “pointing unerringly” to the guilt of the accused

MUMBAI: The Bombay High Court on Friday upheld the life imprisonment of three men convicted in the 2014 gangrape and murder of a 15 year-old girl whose body was found in trolley bag at Talegaon railway station in Pune district, ruling that prosecution had proved an unbroken chain of evidence against them.

HC upholds life terms for 3 in 2014 minor rape-murder case. (Shutterstock)

A division bench of Justices Sarang V. Kotwal and Sandesh D. Patil dismissed the appeals filed by the accused, Santosh Jugdar, Rahul Barai and Jishan Kureshi, observing that there was no reason to interfere with the trial court’s 2023 conviction. The bench noted that the circumstances formed a complete chain of circumstances “pointing unerringly” to the guilt of the accused.

The girl’s body was discovered in 2014 near a public toilet at Taleogon station. She was tied with a nylon rope and had a handkerchief stuffed in her mouth. The postmortem allegedly revealed multiple injuries consistent with forceful sexual assault. Police said the cause of death was head and spinal cord injury along with ligature strangulation.

The case unraveled after police recovered a SIM card from inside the victim’s underwear. Call records led investigators to a Nallasopara resident who revealed she had been staying in a flat there.

Calling the crime brutal and marked by “extreme depravity”, the court refused to show leniency and upheld the 2023 trial court verdict sentencing the trio to life imprisonment under the Indian Penal Code (IPC) and the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act, 2012 provisions.