A city court on Friday sentenced a burglar to life imprisonment for raping a 27-year-old Spanish woman after threatening her at a knife point in her rented third floor flat of a posh building in up-market Perry Cross Road locality at Bandra in north-west Mumbai in November last year.
Handing out life term to accused burglar Mohammed Badshah Ansari, Principal Judge Shalini Phansalkar-Joshi observed: “The court has to keep in mind the interest of the society at large and the case does not have any ground for leniency.”
Ansari’s sentencing came after the judge convicted him for offences registered against him under Sections 376 (rape), 377 (unnatural sex), 452 (trespass), 392 (robbery), 506 (criminal intimidation) and 204 (destruction of evidence) of Indian Penal Code (IPC)
The woman, whose identity has been withheld by the police, was sleeping alone in her rented third floor apartment in a building located on the Perry Cross Road at Bandra, when an armed thief broke into her flat through a window around 3.15 am on November 5, 2012.
Brandishing a knife, the intruder allegedly perpetrated a sexual assault on the woman before decamping half-an-hour later, with valuables including foreign currencies worth Rs35,000.
Ansari was arrested a day after the incident. The accused had earlier been arrested on October 27, 2012, in connection with another case of robbery committed at model —actor Dino Morea’s residence. After he was released on bail in this case Ansari broke into the Spanish woman’s residence on November 5.
The victim woman, who was in India on a scholarship to learn Indian classical music, was alone at the time of crime, as her flat-mate — a woman photographer from Germany - was away in Kerala on an assignment.
A chargesheet was filed against Ansari in the case in January this year. The victim deposed in the trial through video-conferencing from Berlin.
Before the judge pronounced sentence on the accused, Ansari told the court that he had falsely been implicated in the case and sought leniency in punishment on the ground that he had an aged mother, wife and two children to look after.
However, Special Public Prosecutor Ujjwal Nikam contested Ansari’s plea and argued against the court showing the latter leniency on the ground that the accused was a matured individual while committing the crime and his age could not be the only determinant in arriving at the sentence.
Nikam told the court that Ansari, a habitual robber, had a long criminal record and that he had intention of killing to the victim woman - an intention he made it known by telling her “Ab tum khatam” (you are finished) after perpetrating a sexual assault on her.
Maintaining that Ansari had derived vicarious pleasure in committing a sexual crime against the sexual crime against the Spanish woman, Nikam told the court that the accused could not be expected to overcome his perverse attitude through reformative approach.
He told the court that such the nature of criminal intimidation that he had indulged in against her was that she had refused to return to India to depose in the case.
Talking to mediapersons outside the court, Nikam said: “After the crime, she carried a bad impression about India. However, she deposed in the case through a video link from Germany”.
Nikam said that deposition of the victim was the most important piece of evidence in the case in which prosecution had examined 12 witnesses.
After the judge pronounced in the rape case involving the Spanish woman, Ansari broke down.