Mumbai: The Sessions court on Friday sentenced five convicted in the Shakti Mills gang rape cases to life imprisonment. Yesterday, the court had held five men guilty for the gang rape of two women in the abandoned Shakti Mills compound last year. A total of seven persons, including two minors, were arrested in both the cases in which three of them are accused in both cases.
The principal sessions court judge Shalini Phansalkar-Joshi convicted Vijay Jadhav, 19, Mohammad Qasim Shaikh, 21 and Mohammad Ansari, 28, in both the gang rape cases. In addition to the trio, the court found Siraj Khan guilty in the photojournalist gang rape case on 22 August, and Mohammad Ashfaque Shaikh, 26, guilty in the telephone operator gang rape case at the same compound on 31 July, last year.Â
Two minors, one in each case, are being tried by the Juvenile Justice Board separately.
The first case pertains to the gang rape of a 22-year-old magazine photojournalist who had gone to the Shakti Mills compound with a male colleague on an assignment on August 22, 2013. Five men, (including a juvenile) were charged with raping her after assaulting her colleague. They are Vijay Jadhav, Kasim Bengali, Salim Ansari, Siraj Rehman and a minor.
The other case is of an 18-year-old telephone operator who was gang raped by five persons (including three of the accused in the first case) at the same premises on July 31, last year. The accused in this case are Mohammed Ashfaq Sheikh, Mohamed Kasim Hafiz Sheikh alias Kasim Bengali, Salim Ansari, and Vijay Jadhav.