Jahanvi Solanki
Published on: 2nd June,2022 at 17:16 IST
A Special Court in Mumbai has sentenced a 44-year-old man to death for Raping and Murdering a Dalit woman in Saki Naka last year.
Mohan Chauhan was convicted on Monday by a the court in Dindoshi on charges including under Sections 302 (murder), 376A (offence of rape and inflicting injury which causes death or causes the woman to be in a persistent vegetative state), 376 (2)(m) (causing grievous bodily harm or maims or disfigures or endangers the life of a woman while committing rape) of the Indian Penal Code, along with sections of the Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe (Prevention of Atrocities).
Special Judge HC Shende, “Who pronounced the quantum of punishment, categorised the offence as “rarest of rare” citing the brutality of the attack, which caused fatal injuries to the woman”.
On the intervening night of September 9 and September 10, 2021, the woman was found lying in an injured condition at Saki Naka in the Maharashtra capital. She was taken to a civic-run hospital, where she died on September 11.
Police arrested Chauhan and a charge sheet was filed in the case within 18 days, in which it was claimed that he raped the 32-year-old woman after she refused to have sex with him. He allegedly inserted a sharp object into her private parts forcefully, causing fatal injuries.
The prosecution sought the death penalty for Chauhan stating that the sexual assault was gruesome and cold-blooded and that it involved a brutal attack on her private parts, which was so severe that it caused her death. It was also submitted that Chauhan had shown “scant regard for womanhood”.
The incident, which occurred at odd hours, had “raised fears for women’s safety in a metropolitan city like Mumbai”, added the prosecution led by Raja Thakare, Mahesh Mule and Siddharth Jagushte.
Chauhan’s lawyer Kalpana Waskar, who was appointed from the legal aid panel, had said the convict had no criminal antecedents and that his dependents, including his wife, would suffer if he was given the death penalty. He had cooperated during the proceedings, the lawyer said, arguing that the crime could not be categorised as “rarest of rare”.