Eighteen days after a 32-year-old woman was brutally raped and tortured with iron rods at Sakinaka, the Mumbai Police have filed a chargesheet.
A press note released by the police said, “An FIR was filed under Sections 302 (punishment for murder), 376 (punishment for rape), 323 (punishment for voluntarily causing hurt), 504 (intentional insult with intent to provoke breach of peace) and 34 (acts done in furtherance of common intention) of the IPC and Sections of the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act. The chargesheet of 346 pages was filed after examining 77 witnesses.”
Senior advocate Raja Thakare, appointed to assist the prosecution, told The Hindu, “The charge sheet will be submitted before the Dindoshi court.”
The police received a call at 3.30 a.m. on September 10 that a man was thrashing a woman on Khairani Road at Sakinaka. The police found the woman in a pool of blood and rushed her to the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation’s Rajawadi Hospital.
A preliminary check up said she was raped and assaulted with an iron rod in her private parts inside a tempo. She succumbed to her injuries the next day. Accused Mohan Chouhan, 45, was arrested soon thereafter.
He hails from Jaunpur in Uttar Pradesh and worked as a tempo driver. Mumbai Police Commissioner Hemant Nagrale had said Chouhan and the victim knew each other and had a financial dispute which led to a verbal argument resulting in the rape. They were both homeless and stayed on the same stretch of the road.
Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray announced ₹20 lakh for the victim’s daughters.
