Eleven months after the trial began in the much-discussed Kopardi minor girl rape and murder case, a special court set up at Ahmednagar in western Maharashtra under the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act will deliver its verdict in the case on Saturday.
During the trial which began before the special court of Ahmednagar district Sessions Judge (Mrs) Suvarna Keole on December 20, 2016, the Prosecution examined 31 witnesses, while defence lawyer defence lawyer Vijayalaxmi Khopade – representing one of the three accused in the case – examined one witness.
A 15-year-old victim girl, who belonged to the Maratha community, was brutally raped between 7.35 pm and 8.15 pm July 13, 2016 and was later throttled to death. (The victim girl was on her way to bring spice from her grandfather 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.
There are three accused — Jitendra alias Pappu Babulal Shinde (26), Santosh Gorkha Bhawal (30) and Nitin Gopinath Bhailume (28) — in the case.
The fast-track court had on November 9 last year framed charges against three accused — Jitendra Shinde, Santosh Bhawal and Nitin Bhailume — under various sections of POSCO Act and IPC for allegedly perpetrating a sexual assault on the victim girl and strangulating her.
The Prosecution’s case is that the prime accused Jitendra Shinde allegedly raped and murdered the girl, while two other accused Bhawal and Bhailume had “conspired” with Shinde in the heinous crime.
Though the police had initially hyped the case to be a “gang-rape”, Special Prosecutor Ujjwal Nikam adduced 24 pieces of evidence to state it was the prime accused Jitendra Shinde who had raped and throttled the victim girl to death. He had also told the court that though the two of the accused were not physically present at the crime scene, they had conspired with the prime accused in the commission of the heinous act.
In his final arguments before the court, Nikam had said the entire case was based on “circumstantial evidence” and sought to build the chain of events leading to the rape and “homicidal death” of the victim girl.
Seeking to substantiate the Prosecution’s stand that Bhawal and Bhailume had “conspired” with the accused, Nikam had among other things told the court that the two accused were present along with the prime accused “eve-teased” the victim girl two days prior to the incident and that Shinde had given a “missed” call to Bhilume when the latter and Bhawal were allegedly in the neigbhourbood of the crime scene.
Picking holes in the Prosecution’s case, Khopade – who represented Bhawal – among other things questioned the invocation of POSCO) Act in the absence of oral or documentary evidence to prove the age of the victim and contested the Prosecution’s very claim that the complainant – a cousin of the victim --had seen the prime accused Jitendra Shinde after the incident. She had also questioned the claim of another witness – a “purported” classmate whom she called a “ghost” witness – had seen the prime accused eve-teasing the victim girl in the presence of the two co-accused two days prior to the incident.
Vijayalaxmi had also questioned the veracity of the chain of events as narrated by the victim girl’s cousin who has told the court that he had seen the prime accused under a Neem tree near the crime on the night of the incident, that he had chased the prime accused to his residence after the incident, spoken to the mother of the accused and that he had along with other family taken the victim girl to the hospital.
Citing section 29 (a) of the IPC (electronic evidence) 2 (t) of Information Technology Act and 65 (b) of the Evidence Act, Vijayalaxmi had questioned the admissibility of the site map and photographs of the victim girl and site. She told the court that these documents were not part of the charge-sheet but were produced before the court during the course of the trial.
Another defence lawyer Prakash Aher among other things told the court that his client had been framed in the case, since his name did not figure either in FIR or supplementary statement of one of the witnesses, demanded to know why the either the victim girl father who was in a nearby agricultural field or the grandmother to whose the victim girl was going to fetch spice, had not been examined.
Vijaylaxmi and Aher said that there was no medical evidence against their clients. They questioned the authenticity of the eve-teasing incident which, the Prosecution said, had taken place two days prior to the incident.
Yohan Makasare, defence lawyer representing the prime accused, argued that his client had been framed in the case and there were a lot of contradictions in the evidence adduced by the Prosecution and also the Panchanama done by the police.
The trial saw several twists and turns. At one stage, defence lawyer Vijayalaxmi Khopade had rooted for making six persons including Special Public Prosecutor Ujjwal Nikam, as a defence witness in the case, while another defence lawyer Prakash Aher had urged the court to make a chief minister Devendra Fadnavis as a defence witness.
While Aher subsequently withdrew his plea seeking to make the chief minister a defence witness in the case. Vijaylaxmi moved the Aurangabad bench of the Bombay High Court after the trial court rejected her plea seeking to make Nikam and five other persons defence witnesses in the case. The high court ordered that only person Rajendra Chavan be made a defence witness, while rejecting her plea to make Nikam and four others as defence witnesses in the case
later, Vijayalaxmi moved the Supreme Court against the high court’s order. But, the apex court upheld the high court’s order. In one significant development, the apex court disapproved the mention of the names of the victim, informant and the name of the village in the order of the lower court bench. It directed the Aurangabad bench of the high court to modify its order.