Meerut: A local court in Baghpat pronounced a cleric, Mohd Zubair, guilty of raping a 49-year-old UP police head constable and blackmailing her into submission, and awarded life sentence to the convict.
The woman’s 17-year-old son had met with an accident in 2018 and his condition did not improve. Someone introduced her to the cleric, who claimed the boy was possessed and that he would “exorcise the evil spirit”. She believed in him, and during the process of “treatment”, Zubair raped the mother. In October 2019, the woman filed an FIR against the cleric.
On Friday, the sessions court of special justice Shailendra Pandey also slapped a fine of Rs 50,000 on the convict. The court observed that the “convict has knowingly, lured a hapless Dalit woman into his trap by promising removal of evil through ‘tantra’ and not only raped her repeatedly, but also fleeced her financially. This falls in the category of heinous crime and he is a threat to humanity.”
The woman is a widow and had lost her husband who was in UP police to illness in 2002. Four years later she got a constable’s job under the “deceased dependent” quota.
In her police statement, the woman had stated: “I had three children to raise all by myself. My youngest son, who was 17, met with a road accident in June 2018 and was critical. His condition did not improve for over a month and while I was crying one day, a woman asked me to meet this cleric in Baghpat who asked me to come late at night. He made me narrate my ordeal in front of a mirror and asked me to take off my clothes. When I showed my reluctance he claimed a ‘djinn’ had possessed him and if I did not obey him, my son would die. I complied. He raped me and asked me to come to him regularly. I felt disgusted but was in such a frame of mind that I could do anything to save my son. He also forced me to shell out Rs 7.5 lakh in a span of 16 months.”
Ram Pal Singh Nehra, the woman’s lawyer, said, “In all, 10 witnesses, including the victim, were produced in court in the past two years of trial. The court found Zubair guilty of rape. He was awarded life term in addition to a fine of Rs 50,000, of which, Rs 40,000 must be given to the woman.”
Courtesy : Times of india.
Note: This news piece was originally published in timesofindia.indiatimes.com and used purely for non-profit/non-commercial purposes exclusively for Human Rights objectives.
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