The Special Court in Dehradun on Tuesday sentenced four out of five accused to life imprisonment for the gang rape of a woman in Haridwar Road in 2005. Case against the fifth accused who is a minor is pending in the Juvenile Court. A woman resident of Rajpur who had visited Ganesh Jyotish Kendra at Haridwar Road to seek a cure for a disease was gang raped by five persons in June 2005. A case under appropriate sections of IPC was registered against all the five persons in the Kotwali Police Station in October 2005.
All the five persons including Jhunjhun (Rajasthan) native Motilal, Makkhanlal, Subhash Kumar, Raju alias Rajkumar were made accused in this case.
The sentenced men said, “We all are married. We respect the court order but we are the victims of conspiracy by some persons. We did not get justice in Uttarakhand. We will move to the High Court against this verdict.” The special court of ADJ Amit Kumar Sirohi held all four accused guilty on October 12 and quantum of sentence was pronounced on Tuesday. The court has convicted the four under sections 420, 120 b and 376 (2) (g) of IPC to life imprisonment and penalty of Rs5, 000 each. It may be mentioned here that in the name of curing the disease with the help of tantrik, all the accused, native of Jhunjhun (Rajasthan) had opened a centre named Ganesh Jyotish Kendra at Haridwar Road in the year 2005. This woman had visited the centre after reading their advertisement in newspaper. The four men and a minor had raped her at centre. In the first meet, the accused Motilal had taken Rs5,100 from the victim as consultation charge and for medicines and he told her to visit again if the disease was not cured. She was raped by the five when she went to consult Motilal for the third time.