rape

Uber cab driver Shiv Kumar Yadav who raped a woman executive on 5 December last year was awarded life imprisonment till death by a court here on Tuesday.

Additional Sessions Judge Kaveri Baweja pronounced the order.

Yadav was convicted last month on charges of rape, causing grievous bodily harm and endangering the life of the woman, and other charges dealing with kidnapping, criminal intimidation and voluntarily causing hurt.

On the night of 5 December, the woman hired the cab to head back home in north Delhi’s Inderlok area. Police said Yadav drove the woman to an isolated place and raped her.

A rape-victim progressed to the statement-recording stage before the magistrate in her rape-complaint, 28 years after she filed a police complaint alleging rape, reported The Hindu.

“We got the victim to record her statement in the court of Principal District and Sessions Judge Bandipora on 6 October. The rape case had been filed in 1987,” public prosecutor Shafeeq Ahmad Bhat was quoted as saying in The Hindu’s report.

It was reported that the victim’s statement could not be recorded before the court for nearly three decades as the prime accused in the case was absconding. Two of the accused have died during the course of the trial, the third accused is in custody. Now, the prime accused has been asked to appear before 5 November at the court through a public notice published in newspapers, otherwise the court would attach the property of the accused.

The incident occurred in 1987 when the prosecutrix was 17 years old. She was abducted from her home and confined to a hotel in Srinagar where she was allegedly repeatedly raped by the accused for 12 days.

History was made in Court No.6 yesterday (Wednesday, 16 September) with justices J Chelameswar and Abhay Manohar Sapre hearing in camera, Ravi, who is in judicial custody at the police station in Khekhra, Bhagpat district, Uttar Pradesh, in connection with a crime registered under the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances Act since May 28, 2015.

The words of an alleged rape and kidnap survivor, reported by The Ladies Finger in a must-read account of how criminal complaints against sexual violence can go:

It’s been a year now, and filing this case is something I regret all the time. It’s traumatic enough when the assault occurs, but what you have to deal with afterward is worse. To those who are afraid to stand up for themselves after what happened to them, I completely understand what they are going through. All this time has passed, yet no trial date has been confirmed for my case. There is so much corruption involved; this is not something I still want to deal with a year later.

When you’re involved in a case like this, you either have a choice to stand up and fight for your rights, or you can choose to shut your mouth. If I could go back in time, for the sake of my life, my peace, my sanity, I would choose the latter option. Yes, I might have been emotionally scarred, but I would not have had to deal with the trauma of the press, the cops; being asked the same question a hundred times over.

Read in full at The Ladies Finger.

PTI reported:

The Supreme Court on Tuesday sought response from two advocates, representing the 16 December gangrape convicts, against whom a women lawyers body has sought action for allegedly making derogatory remarks against women in a BBC documentary on the case. “We have heard the argument, pleadings and grievances urged in the petition. The matter requires consideration in view of the factual and legal submissions,” a bench comprising justices V Gopala Gowda and C Nagappan said.

The bench issued notices to the two advocates, ML Sharma and AP Singh, and sought their response in two weeks. The Supreme Court Women Lawyers Association, in its petition, had sought restriction on the entry of the two advocates in the apex court premises, alleging that their remarks in the controversial BBC documentary were “inhumane, scandalous, unjustifiable, biased, outrageous, ill-minded” and are a “direct affront to and in violation of the dignity of women”, especially those practising in the Supreme Court.

The Delhi bar council will take suo motu action against advocates ML Sharma and AP Singh, who made controversial comments in a documentary about the December 2012 Delhi rapists.

Gangrape lawyers ML Sharma, AP Singh might face BCI inquiry (again), promises BCI chairman MK Mishra.