Shakti Mills gang rapes: Juveniles get correctional sentences

The Juvenile Justice Board Tuesday awarded correctional sentence to two juveniles for the 2013 Shakti Mills gang rapes of a photojournalist and a call centre employee.

The duo has been awarded three years' correctional sentence to be spent at a borstal school in Nashik where they will learn good behaviour, according to Special Public Prosecutor Ujjwal Nikam, who defended the two women victims.

The JJB, comprising Principal Magistrate G.B. Jadhav and member Mery Chettiyar, found the two minor guilty of gang rape, criminal conspiracy, molestation and other sections of the Indian Penal Code.

While one of the accused juvenile was nabbed for gang rape of a woman photojournalist, 22, the other was arrested for a similar crime against the 19-year-old call centre employee.

In April, the Sessions Court Mumbai had awarded death sentences to three convicts involved in both the gang rapes while two of their associates were give life sentences.

Vijay Jadhav (19), Kasim Bengali (21) and Mohammed Salim Ansari (28) got the death penalty for their involvement in both the cases while Siraj Rehman (24) and Ashfaque Shaikh (26) got lifers for their involvement in the photojournalist and call centre employee cases respectively.

The photojournalist was brutally gang raped Aug 22, 2013 while the call centre employee was gang raped in the same Shakti Mills premises a month earlier.

After the photojournalist case was highlighted in the media and sketches of the accused were flashed, the call centre employee recognised the perpetrators of the gang rape she suffered and complained to the police.