Court frees man charged for forcing girl into prostitution

An Assam native, tried on charges of raping a girl and forcing her into prostitution, after bringing her to Delhi from his state, on pretext of providing a job, has been let off by a Delhi court, as the victim turned hostile.

An Assam native, tried on charges of raping a girl and forcing her into prostitution, after bringing her to Delhi from his state, on pretext of providing a job, has been let off by a Delhi court, as the victim turned hostile.

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Additional Sessions Judge (ASJ) Madhu Jain acquitted Raju Ahmed, giving him benefit of doubt after the victim denied all allegations she had earlier levelled against him before the police.

The court let off the accused, noting that the victim had, during the trial, accused a prosecution witness Abhishek Gupta, a north Delhi resident, who had been untraceable during court proceedings, of raping her and torturing her to implicate Raju in the case. The victim had earlier told police and a magisterial court that Raju had brought her to Delhi along with her mother and sister on pretext of arranging a job for her, so she could take care of her family, after her father’s death in 2008.

She said he kept them at a rented accommodation at Janakpuri in west Delhi, where four other girls, all from Assam, were residing.

“Thereafter, the accused made physical relations with her and threatened to kill her mother and sister. As per the victim, after some time, he started sending her to houses of other persons too for prostitution and, meanwhile, he kept changing his residence from one place to another in Delhi,” ASJ Jain noted in her judgement. “In March 2009, the accused sent her to Shalimar Bagh, where a woman met her and sent her for prostitution.”