Four men who allegedly gang-raped a doctor after abducting her in an auto in Katpadi in 2022 were sentenced to 20 years of rigorous imprisonment by the Mahila Court in Vellore.
The incident had caused a political outrage in the state then, leading to the opposition parties demanding stringent action on the perpetrators.
Police identified the suspects arrested in the crime as Parthiban, an auto driver, Mani alias Manikandan, a daily wage worker, and his friends, Bharath and Santhosh. The fifth suspect, a juvenile, is facing trial before the juvenile justice board, police said.
They were produced before the Vellore sessions judge (fast track Mahila court) S Maheshwari Banurekha on Thursday, who awarded the sentences and imposed a fine of ₹25,000 on each of them.
The victim, who was from Bihar, along with her male colleague from Nagpur were returning home after watching a movie in Katpadi in Vellore district on March 16, 2022, at 12.30am when the auto-borne gang of five convinced them to board the vehicle claiming it to be a shared auto.
Instead of heading towards their destination in Old Town via Green Circle on the Chennai-Bengaluru highway, the driver took them to Sathuvachari near the Palar river bed. The gang attacked the woman doctor’s colleague and reportedly raped her after immobilising her colleague at knife-point, said police.
{{/usCountry}}Instead of heading towards their destination in Old Town via Green Circle on the Chennai-Bengaluru highway, the driver took them to Sathuvachari near the Palar river bed. The gang attacked the woman doctor’s colleague and reportedly raped her after immobilising her colleague at knife-point, said police.
{{/usCountry}}The two were robbed of their mobile phones, two sovereign gold jewellery and ATM cards with which the gang withdrew ₹40,000.
The incident came to light after three members of the gang were reportedly arrested in connection with a drunken brawl.
During the interrogation, they confessed to committing the gangrape along with two others, leading to the arrest of the remaining suspects. An online complaint was later obtained from the woman doctor, who had returned to Bihar, on March 22, police said.
N Mathivanan, superintendent of police, Vellore, said the conviction in the case happened because of diligent collection of evidence and its presentation in the court. “I appreciate the effort of the entire team,” he told reporters on Friday.
(With PTI inputs)