Three charged with gangrape of 21-yr-old Dehradun woman in Chandigarh
Father of two daughters among four children, Irfan, 29, is also accused of raping a 21-year-old call centre employee in December 2016.
Five months after a 21-year-old woman was allegedly gangraped in a jungle in Sector 53, a local court charged three men with gangrape and criminal intimidation on Monday.
The court of additional district and sessions judge Poonam R Joshi framed charges under Section 376D (gangrape) and 506 (criminal intimidation) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) against the accused, Mohammad Irfan, Mohammad Garib and Popu alias Kismat Ali.
Must read | Chandigarh: Two gangrapes, same modus operandi, one perpetrator
The trial will begin on May 4.
Police chargesheet came in Feb
The Chandigarh Police had submitted the chargesheet against the three accused in February, just a day before completion of 90 days since the FIR was registered, failure of which would have entitled the trio to get default bail.
The chargesheet comprising 372 pages includes 25 witnesses, with the victim being the prime witness. The police had included the medical report of the victim as part of the evidence. Even the owner of a petrol pump where Irfan had stopped to refuel his auto-rickshaw was made a witness in the case.
While initially police had claimed that Irfan was involved in other rape cases too, nothing of this sort was mentioned in the challan.
Accused arrested a week after crime
The trio was arrested on November 24 for allegedly gangraping the 21-year-old woman in the forest area of Sector 53 on November 17.
Hailing from Dehradun, the victim had boarded Irfan’s auto after attending an evening stenography class in Sector 37. Two male passengers were already sitting in the vehicle.
The victim had alleged that instead of driving towards Mohali, where she lived as a paying guest, the auto-rickshaw driver moved towards Sector 42, claiming that he had to refuel his vehicle. After refuelling the auto, the accused drove to an isolated forest area in Sector 53, where the trio took turns to rape her, before fleeing.
An hour later, the two men on a motorcycle spotted her crying on the roadside around 9pm. She narrated the crime to them, following which they sounded the police.