5 convicted for raping mentally ill woman in Maharashtra

Five people were convicted Friday for raping a mentally ill woman in 2016 in Maharashtra's Thane district.

While four of them were sentenced to 20 years in jail by District Judge S A Sinha and also fined Rs 20,000 each for kidnapping and raping the victim, the fifth person, a fruit vendor, was sentenced to 14 years of imprisonment and fined Rs 10,000 for rape.

The 22-year-old woman was raped by the accused on January 8, 2016, Additional Public Prosecutor Ujjwala Moholkar said.

She had first gone to the house of a fruit vendor who raped her, then an autorickshaw driver who promised to drop her home but took her to a desolate place and called three of his friends and raped her, the APP said.

After she narrated her ordeal to her mother, a case was filed at Vartak Nagar police station, Moholkar said.

The five men who have been convicted are fruit vendor Gopi Harishsingh Bora (43), autorickshaw driver Balaji Bala Naroji Kharat (41), Rajesh Lalchand Mourya (26), Kamlesh Pintu Chotelal Gupta (37) and Vijay Bahadur Tufani Kamlaprasad Gupta (43).

Seventeen witnesses were examined during the trial, Moholkar said.