Court confirms life term for medical student’s rapist (Second Lead)

NEW DELHI - Terming his actions as that of a “beast” and a “savage”, the Delhi High Court Monday upheld the life imprisonment of a youth convicted of raping a Maulana Azad Medical College (MAMC) student in 2002. The second convict was acquitted of rape charges but found guilty on other counts.

Upholding the life sentence on Rahul, a division bench of Justices Pradeep Nandrajog and Suresh Kait said: “Rahul not only acted as a beast but even acted as a savage. Thus, we see no scope to reduce the sentence imposed upon Rahul.”

It rejected the defence counsel’s submission that the victim had “cooked up” the entire story.

“It is settled law that where the testimony of a rape witness stands the scrutiny of credibility, there is no need to look for any corroboration.”

The court also noted how the victim had deposed that when she had refused to go up, Rahul touched a black cord around his neck and swore in the name of a saint that except for searching her, no harm would be caused to her.

“This brings out that Rahul rightly gauged the mind of the victim and the fear in her mind, that if she went up, she would be raped, and to allay the fear, Rahul dramatised the touching the black cord around his neck,” the bench said, adding they knew people in India wear black cords with a “taaviz” (amulet) around their neck which they obtain from holy men.

“Rahul was wearing a taaviz,” the bench said.

The bench also noted: “A victim of rape is overcome by various emotions as a result of not only her body being defiled but even the soul being defiled. Fear, shame, helplessness, dejection and anguish would be the negative feelings simultaneously stirring in the mind. All these negative feelings would pull the victim inwards and tend to make her a recluse.”

“At one moment, one feeling may outweigh the others and if the same is a negative feeling drawing the victim inwards, her actions would be to suffer the shame and the humiliation in quiet. The very next moment, the feeling of hatred or retribution may surface and this would lead the victim towards positive steps to report the crime so that the accused is brought to justice,” it noted

Also rejecting the defence counsel’s argument to consider Rahul being a minor at the time of the offence in mitigation, the court said: “It is true that Rahul had barely crossed the age of majority and was around 19 years of age when he committed the offence. No doubt, his age is a mitigating factor, but the brutal manner in which the victim was traumatised, how during the rape, a knife was continuously used to threaten her and the entire sequence of events as disclosed by her show the extreme trauma inflicted upon her by Rahul”.

The court, however, acquitted Amit of rape and booked him for dacoity and criminal intimidation but ordered his release, citing the time he had already spent in jail.

“Since he (Amit) has already undergone the sentence for seven years, he should be released from jail,” the bench said.

The ruling came five years after a lower court convicted both Rahul and Amit of raping a fourth year student at MAMC at knife point on the terrace of the Mughal-era monument Khooni Darwaza in central Delhi Nov 15, 2002.

The trial court in 2005, had acquitted the other two people involved in the case.