NEW DELHI, Dec 30:
People of high repute, including TERI’s R K Pachauri, AAP MLA Somnath Bharti and Mahmood Farooqui of “Peepli Live” fame faced charges of sexual assault and molestation in 2015 in Delhi courts, one of which awarded life imprisonment to the accused driver in the Uber rape case.
Besides the rape case against Farooqui in which an American national was a victim, other sexual assault cases concerning foreign nationals that were watched keenly were the trial in the January 2014 gangrape case of a Danish woman and another one in which 30-year-jail term was awarded to two youths for gangraping a Ugandan woman in June 2014.
Delivering the verdict in the Ugandan woman’s gangrape case, the judge observed that “their (convicts) act brought India disrepute in the eyes of the world” for which they deserved exemplary sentence.
However, one case which had a chilling effect on the society was the December 5, 2014 Uber rape case in which a fast-track court despite facing legal hurdles created by the accused concluded the entire criminal prosecution in 11 months by sending 33-year-old driver Shiv Kumar Yadav to jail for entire life.
While the Uber case and others kept the courts busy, controversial AAP MLA Bharti, who faced a non-bailable warrant in a domestic violence case, lodged by his estranged wife Lipika Mitra, played hide and seek with the law before surrendering after getting a rap from the Supreme Court.
Out on bail, the MLA also had a regular outing before the Saket trial court for his midnight raid during the first stint of AAP government when he was the Law Minister and charged with the molestation case lodged by African nationals.
So was the case with climate scientist Pachauri, who lost his hold over the TERI and was a regular visitor to the Saket court where he is facing the rigour of the criminal proceedings to come out clean in the sexual harassment case lodged by a researcher who quit the organisation alleging that she was not treated well by the management.
The court acted tough against the people of “high social status” for crime against women by terming their unlawful actions as “unpardonable” and in two such cases seven years jail term was awarded to an already married officer of NHRC for deceitfully entering into a wedlock with a widow and an engineer with PWD for sexually exploiting a woman colleague on false pretext of marriage. (PTI)
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