27-year-old engineer gets 10-year jail term for raping minor girlfriend

A 27-year-old engineer from Mumbai has been sentenced to 10 years in prison for sexually assaulting and harassing his minor girlfriend in 2015. The court found him guilty after the girl testified that they had a physical relationship.

Mumbai: A 27-year-old engineer from Andheri has been sentenced to 10 years of imprisonment for sexually assaulting and harassing his minor girlfriend in 2015 as she refused to elope with him against the wishes of her parents.

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“Though there is a love affair, no love can be enforced from one side. At the relevant time, the victim (the girl) was refusing to go with him,” the court said while convicting the man.

As per the prosecution case, the accused and the girl were residing in the same vicinity and fell in love. However, in 2015, the girl appeared for the SSC examination for which she had shifted to the house of her maternal aunt.

On March 5, 2015, she went for the final board paper. After the exam, she and her maternal aunt were waiting at Ghatkopar station to board the train, when the accused came there. He first asked the girl to remove her earrings and later grabbed her hair and pulled her out of the station. He insisted her to shift back to her own house. However, the girl asked him not to create a scene and to leave her alone.

The man, however, pulled her and stopped an auto. Meanwhile, her aunt followed them and stopped him at the auto stand. Due to verbal altercations between them, a crowd gathered around and the accused left the place.

Later in the evening, family members of both the accused and the girl met and the former’s family requested to not register a case. The girl later revealed to her family members that the two were in a relationship wherein the accused had once taken her to his friend’s house, where they had intercourse with her after promising to marry her.

The family, however, reported the incident to the police to ensure that the accused would not harass her in future. The accused was arrested on April 3, 2015, and was granted bail on August 28, 2015.

The accused, in his defence, claimed that the girl always maintained that she was not a minor, and he denied her claim that they had a physical relationship. He admitted that they were in a relationship, and he had proposed to marry her. However, he claimed that since the two were from different religions, the family members of the girl were opposing their relationship. Hence, the accused has been falsely implicated.

The court, however, accepted the sole testimony of the girl who confirmed that the two had sexual relations. Besides, the accused had claimed that on the day of the incident, the girl had called him at the station as the son of her maternal aunt at whose home she was staying used to touch her inappropriately.

The court, after hearing both sides, observed, “Though it can be said that the accused came there because he was called by the victim. But it does not mean that he shall take the law into his own hands.”

“To hold the hair of the minor girl itself is the act of criminal force for outraging the modesty of the girl. Though the victim was in a love affair with the accused, however, she said that she refused to go with him, and she had asked the accused to go from there. But instead of going back, the accused held her hair and pulled her towards Ghatkopar,” the court said.