A trial court on Monday sentenced all five convicts to life imprisonment in the 2010 Dhaula Kuan gangrape-cum-abduction case of a call centre employee.
Additional Sessions Judge Virender Bhat awarded life imprisonment to the five men — Shamshad, alias Khutkan, Usman, alias Kale, Shahid, alias Chhota Billi, Iqbal, alias Bada Billi and Kamruddin — for the offence of gangrape. They were all cattle thieves from Haryana’s Mewat region.
The court also sentenced the convicts to seven years imprisonment for abduction charges, five years rigorous imprisonment for charges of criminal intimidation. The convicts would undergo the jail terms concurrently. The court also imposed a fine of Rs 50,000 each on all the convicts.
The quantum of sentence was pronounced in a jam-packed courtroom amidst high drama with one convict Shahid fainting in the courtroom. He had to be bodily lifted and was taken to the court dispensary. Some relatives of the convicts also broke down in the courtroom and termed the verdict as miscarriage of justice, saying they would challenge the verdict in the Delhi High Court.
The prosecution had sought life term, the maximum jail term for the offences for which the men have been convicted, citing the horrendous nature of crime. The defence counsels, on the other hand, had sought minimum punishment for the convicts on grounds of long custodial period, their family responsibilities and poor financial condition.
The five men were held guilty of abducting the woman, who hailed from the North-East, on November 23-24, 2010 and then gangraping her. The woman was walking home with a friend after her work shift ended. The abductors took her to Mangolpuri, gangraped her, and left her on an isolated road there. The men were later arrested from Mewat in Haryana.