Four Shivaba Sangathana activists, who had indulged in a murderous attack on three convicts in the much-discussed Kopardi rape and murder case on the court premises, were awarded 5 years of rigorous imprisonment by an Ahmednagar district court on Wednesday.
A day after he convicted them in the assault case, District Sessions Judge Satyanarayan Navandar handed five years’ rigorous imprisonment to Amol Sukjhdev Khune (25), Ganesh Parmeshwar Khune (28), Baburao Waman Walekar (30) and Rajendra Balkasaheb Jarad Patil (21) for assaulting the then accused in the Kopardi rape and murder case on the Ahmednagar district court premises on April 1, 2017.
Earlier, on Tuesday, the four Shivaba Sangathana activists were held guilty and convicted on charges on offences registered against them under the Scheduled Castes and Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989 and Arms Act. Wednesday’s development came four months after the three convicts were sentenced to death by a fast-track set up under the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POSCO) Act.
The four Shivaba Sangathana activists had attacked the then three accused in the Kopardi rape and murder case — Jitendra alias Pappu Babulal Shinde (26), Santosh Gorkha Bhawal (30) and Nitin Gopinath Bhailume (28) — with a knife while they were being escorted inside the trial court on April 1, 2017.
During the attack, one of the three accused and three cops were injured in the attack.
Seeking severe punishment for the accused, the Prosecution had told the court that the quartet had come all the way from the distant Beed district in Marathwada region with the sole intention of killing the three accused in the Kopardi rape and murder case. The seized CCTV footage clearly proved that had the police not come to their rescue, all the then three accused in the Kopardi case would have been murdered.
It may be recalled that in the Kopardi case, a 15-year-old girl, who belonged to the dominant Maratha community, was brutally raped sometime between 7:35 pm and 8.15 pm on July 13, 2016 and later throttled to death. The victim girl was on her way to bring some spice from her grandfather’s house at that time. The incident, it may be recalled, had sparked widespread protests in the state, with various political parties and Maratha organisations rooting for capital punishment to the accused.
On November 29 last year, a fast-track set up under the POSCO Act awarded capital punishment to all the three convicts in the case.