10 years in prison for the car driver who raped a disabled child | Mumbai news

MUMBAI: The Special Protection of Children from Sexual Offenses (POCSO) court in Dindoshi on October 22, 2024, sentenced a 57-year-old rickshaw driver from Kandivali West to 10 years in prison for raping a 17-year-old girl. Mentally disabled in July 2017.

The victim, a resident of Malad East, went missing on the night of July 15, 2017, and his mother lodged a complaint with Dindoshi police the next day.

According to her mother, the girl left home at 9.30 pm and slept in a rickshaw parked near Jogeshwari government hospital. He then went to Borivali and asked a rickshaw driver to take him home. According to the prosecution, he handed her over to another auto driver; so she checked into the Green Star Hotel in Malad West, the same place where he allegedly raped her. He then dropped her at Ganesh Nagar Naka in Kandivali. Here he met a third auto driver who took him to Mith Chowki in Malad West, where he spent the night of July 17 sleeping in a parked autorickshaw. He walked home at noon on July 18 and was taken to JJ Hospital for medical examination.

The defense claimed that the indictment was full of contradictions and inconsistencies. They argued that the term the victim used to describe the attack was unclear. The lawyer for the first car driver argued that the prosecution did not have any evidence to confirm that the girl was mentally disabled.

Special judge Nandkishor More observed that there was evidence that the second driver, the main accused, checked into the hotel with the victim and raped her. The court decided that the statements of the mother and the victim were consistent and reliable. Adding that there was no convincing evidence to prove the accusations against the first driver, the court stated that the second car driver was clearly the perpetrator of the crime and convicted him of kidnapping and raping the minor child.