Pune: A court on Friday sent the 37-year-old man accused of raping a woman inside an empty parked state transport bus at Swargate depot in Pune city to police custody till March 12.
The accused, Dattatray Ramdas Gade, was nabbed from a paddy field following an extensive search operation carried out with the help of drones and sniffer dogs around midnight on Thursday in Shirur tehsil of Pune district.
He was formally arrested and produced before the Pune Sessions Court of First Class Magistrate TS Gaigole amid heavy police security.
Advocate Wajid Khan, appearing for the accused, told the court that his client was facing a media trial and claimed the complainant herself went inside the bus.
“We can see in the CCTV camera footages that the woman herself opened the door and stepped in the bus and later came out. A physical relationship was established (between them) with mutual consent,” Khan told the court.
Investigation officer and inspector Yuvraj Nande submitted a remand application to the court and sought Gade’s custody for 14 days.
{{/usCountry}}Investigation officer and inspector Yuvraj Nande submitted a remand application to the court and sought Gade’s custody for 14 days.
{{/usCountry}}Public prosecutor Bhagyashree Sancheti-Dagale and Nadre informed the court that Gade had sexually assaulted the survivor twice. The woman, fearing for her safety, boarded a bus heading to Satara. She later got off at Hadapsar and called a friend, eventually filing a police complaint.
They told the court the accused engaged the 26-year-old victim in conversation at the Swargate terminus on Tuesday morning, calling her ‘didi’ (sister) and took her to an empty Shivshahi bus parked at the depot premises and allegedly raped her.
Gade, who faces half a dozen criminal cases in Pune and Ahilyanagar districts, is clearly seen in the CCTV footage of the bus terminus on the day of the incident, according to the police.
The data of the mobile phone he was using was yet to be recovered, they informed the court.
The police stated that of the half a dozen cases registered against Gade, women are complainants in five of them.
The court, after listening to both sides, remanded Gade to police custody till March 12.
Considering the gravity of the case, over 100 police personnel were deployed at the court premises for security purpose.
Meanwhile, members of Nationalist Congress Party (Sharadchandra Pawar) and Shiv Sena (UBT) protested outside of the court’s gate number 4. The police detained the protestors and took them to the Shivajinagar police station.