New Delhi: A sessions court in Mumbai on Friday awarded death sentence to all three convicts in the Shakti Mills gang-rape case.
Principal Sessions Judge Shalini Phansalkar-Joshi convicted the accused – Vijay Jadhav (19), Kasim Bengali (21) and Mohammed Salim Ansari (28) – under Section 376(e) (repeated offence of rape) of the Indian Penal Code.
The three were earlier convicted in the gang-rape case of a telephone operator at the Shakti Mills compound and sentenced to life imprisonment in that case.
According to prosecution, this qualifies them for punishment under the amended Section in the photojournalist gang-rape case.
The 22-year-old photojournalist of a magazine was gang-raped by Vijay Jadhav, Kasim Bengali, Salim Ansari, Siraj Rehman and a minor boy when she had gone to the Shakti Mills compound with a male colleague on an assignment.
The Bombay High Court had last week refused to interfere with the sessions court’s decision to frame a fresh charge for repeat offence of rape.
