File pic: Protests after a 22-year-old photojournalist was gang-raped in Mumbai
Four of the five men accused of gang-raping a photojournalist last month were formally charged today.
The four suspects appeared in court today barefoot and disheveled. They were charged with eight offences including gang-rape, unnatural sex, destruction of evidence and conspiracy.
The fifth suspect, who was under 18 at the time of the attack, is likely to be charged separately in a juvenile court. "We are clearly working on getting a conviction in the case and will be asking for the maximum penalty under the law," Joint Commissoner of Police (Crime) Himanshu Roy said.
The five men allegedly raped the 22-year-old girl inside the desolate Shakti Mills compound while she was on assignment on August 22. A male colleague with the girl was also assaulted and tied up with belts before the men allegedly held a broken beer bottle to the girl's head and raped her.
The 600-page chargesheet lists 82 witnesses, details of the victim's ordeal, crucial evidence collected from the spot, DNA analysis reports, phone call records and identification parade information, among others, police said.
The police, which had arrested all the accused in less than 72 hours after the crime, claim they have more than sufficient evidence against the five accused - Salim Ansari, Vijay Jadhav, Kasim Bengali, Siraj Rehman Khan and a minor.
The accused had confessed to the crime and had revealed that they had committed similar crimes in the past.
The case had triggered massive outrage in Mumbai and elsewhere. It had worrying parallels with the December 16 gang-rape case in Delhi, where a 23-year-old paramedical student was fatally assaulted in a moving bus by six men, one of them a minor.
One of the six men was found dead in his prison cell a few months ago. Four of them were sentenced to death last week, and the youngest, who was 17 at the time of the crime, has been sent to a reform home.