Jharkhand: Missionary school head, 5 others sentenced to life imprisonment in gang-rape case

A local court Friday sentenced a missionary school head and five others to life imprisonment in connection with the gang-rape of five tribal women in Khunti district last year.

Additional District Judge Rajesh Kumar pronounced life sentence to Father Alfonso Aiend, the principal of the missionary school, John Jonas Tudu alias Yusuf and Balram Samad under sections 120B (criminal conspiracy), 109 and 111 (abetment of crime) of IPC, Public Prosecutor Sushil Kumar Jaiswal said.

The other three convicts -- Ayub Sandi Purti, Jonas Mundi and Baji Samad the banned People's Liberation Front of India (PLFI), a splinter group of the CPI (Maoist), -- were awarded life sentence under sections 376 (rape), 354B (assault or use of criminal force to a woman with intent to outrage her modesty), 363 (kidnapping), 365 (kidnapping with intent secretly and wrongfully to confine a person) among others, he said.

The court, which had convicted the six on May 7, also slapped a fine of Rs 1 lakh on each of them.

All the six were arrested after the gang-rape on June 19 last year. Aind was arrested on the charge of aiding and abetting the crime.

The victims were part of a troupe that visited a school in Kochang in Khunti district to enact a play on anti-human trafficking and migration when the five persons took them forcibly to a nearby forest and raped them at gunpoint.