"The accused was appointed as a security watchman and it was his duty to protect every member of the society. The accused had committed the crime with the motive to satisfy the unbridled lust of having sex with victim girl." Thus went the final argument of the special public prosecutor Vaibhav Bagade in the chilling Powai rape case.
In January 2014, when the 28-year-old woman got back home from a dinner party, the security guard of her housing society, Pramod Kumar Upadhyay, raped her, and then proceeded to rob her of her belongings.
The court held that the prosecution's case was proved beyond reasonable doubt, and on Thursday convicted the security guard. The court sentenced the accused to 10 years of rigorous imprisonment (RI) for rape. and seven years of RI on the charge of robbery.
According to the prosecution's case, the victim, a dance teacher by profession, had gone to a hotel in Powai for dinner with two of her friends. They left the hotel after midnight. The victim had had two glasses of wine, and was in an inebriated state when she got home, after a rickshaw ride with her two friends, who left after dropping her outside her building.
The CCTV in the victim's building showed her entering the premises around 3.30am. However, as per her friends' deposition, he dropped her outside her building at 2 am. After investigation, the police realised that the watchman was not on his seat for that timing and arrested him.
Speaking to dna, advocate Bagade said, "After examining the victim, the police found that there were bite marks on her body. We thus asked the an odontologist to examine the culprit's tooth marks, and the results came in positive. The marks on the victim's body matched with those of the accused's teeth. Also the medical certificates supported the prosecution's claim."
Bagade also gave credit to the victim, who helped the police gather a lot of evidence.
