Rape accused acquitted

All six students accused of the alleged date rape of an American student of the Tata Institute of Social Sciences in April 2009 were acquitted by a judge of the fast track court in Sewri on October 6, 2010. Justice S. D. Jagmalani, who tried the case in-camera, said he had found the alleged victim to be an unreliable witness and there was an "absence of satisfactory and supporting” evidence to substantiate her claims, reported The Times of India (TOI) on October 7, 2010.

All but one of the accused — Darayus (Dev) Colabawala, Vinamra Soni, Harshvardhan Yadav, Jashkaran (Karan) Bhullar, Anish Borkataki and Kundan Raj Borgohain — were college students ranging in age from 21 to 23 years at the time of the incident (see "The seamier side,” Events and Personalities, Parsiana, July 7, 2009). When the judge pronounced them "not guilty” they broke down and cried, falling at the feet of their respective lawyers. Their parents too became emotional once the ordeal was over.

"The victim’s evidence does not inspire confidence and as such her uncorroborated version could not form a basis of conviction,” the judge noted. She claimed she had gone out with the youths who had compelled her to drink some beer, after which she felt dizzy. When she asked to be taken home they took her to a flat in Versova where she became unconscious and was allegedly raped. TOI reports that the main loophole in her version was that though she claimed to have been unconscious her phone records showed that she had made 12 calls between 2 a.m. and 6 a.m. when the incident is alleged to have occurred. Nor did the DNA evidence establish rape or that she had been given a date rape drug, TOI reported.