Forensic reprieve

Dr Rustum Soonawalla, the general practitioner from Dadar who was accused of rape by a patient on May 17, 2013, has been given a "clean chit” in a report from the State Forensic Science Laboratory submitted to the Khar police station five months after the alleged sexual assault, revealed Mumbai Mirror (MM) in its edition of October 30, 2013. The forensic report mainly relied on matching Soonawalla’s DNA with the semen found on a bed in his clinic where the alleged incident took place. The samples did not match.

Dr Rustum Soonawalla: truth will come out

The Mumbai Newsline section of The Indian Express (IE) on November 1, 2013 reported that the husband of the "rape victim” has alleged that the inner garments worn by the woman at the time of the crime were tampered with. According to him, the garment had been washed, a charge which the police have been said to refute.
Though the Khar police station will go ahead and file a charge sheet despite the forensic evidence, MM reports that Soonawalla has expressed full faith in the judiciary. "The truth will come out. The matter is sub judice and all I want to say at this stage is that I am innocent.”