Death sentence to three Shakti Mills gang rapists

Mumbai: A court here Friday sentenced three people to death for gang raping a photo-journalist in a repeat offence in the Shakti Mills complex here last August.
Vijay Jadhav (18), Qasim Hafiz Sheikh, alias Qasim Bengali (20), and Salim Ansari (27) were Thursday also convicted for gang raping a call centre employee in the same premises barely three weeks earlier on July 31 last year.
Principal Sessions Judge Shalini Phansalkar-Joshi delivered the much-awaited judgment in the case, sentencing the three to death penalty for repeated offences of gang rape – committed July 31 and Aug 22, 2013, said Special Public Prosecutor Ujjwal Nikam.
The court said, “Mumbai gang-rape accused have least respect for law. They don’t have potential for reformation as per facts of case.”
“The suffering that gang-rape survivor and her family has undergone is unparalleled,” the court said.
“Mumbai gang-rape accused were emboldened since law enforcing agencies hadn’t caught them. If this is not the case where death sentence prescribed by law is not valid, which is?” the judge asked.
“Exemplary and rarest of rare punishment is required in the case,” the judge said, adding, crime violates all rights of survivor.
Prosecutor Ujjwal Nikam had demanded the maximum punishment for the three repeat offenders.
Kasim Bengali, Vijay Jadhav and Mohammed Salim Ansari are the common accused who are also convicted in the telephone operator gang-rape case.
The 18-year-old telephone operator was gang raped on the premises of Shakti Mills in July last year a month before the photojournalist was brutalised on August 22.
The 22-year-old photo journalist of a magazine was gang raped by Vijay Jadhav, Kasim Bengali, Salim Ansari, Siraj Rehman and a minor boy when she had gone to the Shakti Mills compound in the Central Mumbai with a male colleague on an assignment. (IANS with inputs from Agencies)