BENGALURU: The Karnataka High Court on Wednesday confirmed the life sentence awarded by a trial court to seven people involved in the gangrape of a law student on the Jnana Bharathi campus in the city in October 2012. A division bench of Justice B Veerappa and Justice K Natarajan upheld the order passed by the trial court in September 2013 and 2017, sentencing the accused to life imprisonment, and dismissed their appeals.
The convicted are Ramu, Shivanna, Maddura, Eleyaiah aka Eleya, Eeraiah, Ramu and Dodda Eeraiah aka Doddeera, residents of Metaridoddi in Ramanagara taluk. Additional State Public Prosecutor Vijay Kumar Majage said the victim, a native of Nepal, supported the case fully by identifying the accused during the Test Identification Parade and deposed each and every overt act of the culprits before the court, which helped the prosecution to prove the case beyond doubt.
Gangrape: One accused was a minor
Majage added that the victim, who discontinued her studies after the incident, came all the way from her hometown and withstood with the rigorous cross-examination to nail the accused, though she has suffered mental trauma and humiliation. Six of eight accused were sentenced to life imprisonment in September 2013 by the trial court.
The student was gangraped after she was dropped off at the girls hostel near Gandhi Bhavan on the Bangalore University campus, by her friend in a car around 9 pm on October 13, 2012. One of the accused, Ramu, was sentenced in 2017, as he was absconding after the crime and was later arrested. The proceedings was initiated against another accused under the Juvenile Justice Act, as he was a minor then.