Life imprisonment for 11 in Bilkis Bano gang-rape case

Special Correspondent

Not the rarest of rare cases to warrant death penalty: court

Head Constable gets three-year imprisonment

Seven accused acquitted of all charges

MUMBAI: Special Judge U. D. Salvi of the Sessions court here on Monday sentenced 11 persons to life imprisonment and a fine of Rs.2,000 on each count in the Bilkis Bano case.

Five-month pregnant Bilkis and her family were set upon by two jeeploads of men from Randhikpur village in Dahod district during the Gujarat riots on March 3, 2002. Four women and four children were killed and six went missing. She was stripped and gang-raped.

Jaswant Nai, Govind Nai, Shailesh Bhatt, Radhyesham Bhagwan Das Shah, Bipin Chandra Joshi, Kesarbhai Vohania, Pradeep Mordhiya, Bakabhai Vohania, Rajubhai Soni, Mitesh Bhatt and Ramesh Chandana were held guilty of murder, gang-rape and rape of a pregnant woman. They were also sentenced to 10-year rigorous imprisonment for gang-rape and raping a pregnant woman. The sentences would run concurrently.

The charges against the accused included conspiracy, rioting with deadly weapons, causing disappearance of evidence and unlawful assembly.

Head Constable Somabhai Gori of the Limkheda police station was sentenced to three-year imprisonment for framing false records and refusing to lodge Bilkis Bano’s first complaint. He was also fined Rs.3,000. Gori has already been in jail for three years and nine months and has been suspended from service.

The prosecution demanded the death penalty for Jaswant Nai, Govind Nai and Shailesh Bhatt, charged with raping Bilkis. Bhatt was the man who killed her three-and-half-year-old child Saleha, said the prosecution, adding that the attack was pre planned and it happened after Vishwa Hindu Parishad called a bandh in the wake of the Godhra train burning incident.

However, the judge ruled that the death penalty could only be given in the rarest of rare cases. In this case, the evidence was blank on the role of each accused.

The court observed that during riots many had secret agendas and they were not necessarily crusaders for their religion. Some looted, some plundered, some satisfied their lust and some joined a mob in killing.

The evidence during the trial also pointed out that some Hindus did shelter affected women. As things stood, all the accused shared a joint liability and the conspiracy theory was proved.

Seven persons were acquitted of all charges — Narpat Singh, Idris Abdul Sayed, Bikabhai Patel, R.S. Bhagora, Dr. Arun Kumar, Dr. Sangeeta Prasad and Ramsingh Bhabor.

http://www.hindu.com/2008/01/22/stories/2008012250100100.htm

NRI Fashion designer Anand Jon: Villain or victim

Shishir Srivastava, 09 January 2008, Wednesday

Famous Indians abroad, like Arun Jain of Polaris in Malaysia or Phaneesh Murthy, an ex-Infy guy at California, have faced trauma due to racial discrimination or sexual abuse allegations. Anand Jon is the latest awaiting Indian government mediation.

ANAND JON has been in solitary confinement in a Los Angeles jail for months. Is he guilty of the sexual abuse allegations that he is facing? Or is he a victim of professional jealousy? The Indian government should step in to help.

Anand Jon Alexander, 33-year-old Indian-born fashion designer, who appeared on "America’s Top Model" in 2003 and was named by Newsweek as a person to watch in 2007, has dressed such celebrities as Paris Hilton, Ivanka Trump, Bruce Springsteen and Janet Jackson. A graduate of the Parsons School of Design, he launched his own label in 1999. Jon was arrested in March 2007 in Beverly Hills on rape and related charges. On November 20, 2007, Alexander was indicted in New York on charges of rape and sexual assault of nine women. A 40-count indictment charges him with rape, aggravated sex abuse and related crimes that stem from assaults from November 2002 through September 2006.

Anand’s sister has sought help from the government of India in this connection. Claiming that her brother was innocent, Sanjana Jon has asked the centre to help her absolve her brother of all allegations. Sanjana Jon has been awarded an “International Rising Star” award in Canada and she spearheaded the International Miss Universe AIDS awareness tour to Asia.

Sanjana Jon met Vayalar Ravi, the minister of Overseas Indian Affairs and sought his help. Ravi asked her to furnish details and file a petition as he looked into the matter. Meanwhile, Jon is charged with a total of 59 counts involving 18 victims, all with ties to the fashion industry and between the ages of 14 and 27. The charges levied against him range from rape to lewd acts against children and possession of child pornography. If convicted, Jon would well be spending the rest of his life in jail. Currently he has furnished a $1.3 million bond for his bail.

Will the Indian government step in to help?

Can India intervene in the judicial process of another country?

Overseas Indian Affairs minister Vayalar Ravi’s statement on Friday, where he said he would persuade the external affairs ministry to take up the case of New York-based fashion designer Anand Jon.

Ravi said that the number of complaints cropping up against Jon in New York and Florida seemed to suggest the designer was ’’framed’’.

His mother Shashi Abraham goes on to say, “My son is innocent. Anand has made India proud all these years. And he is not a person with a criminal record. They were all aggressive and powerful girls and are saying that this happened in 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005. And they were still hanging around with him. Does that make any sense?

We need Government’s help and they must step in to get our son out of jail. They should ask the US government to give the citizen a fair trial’’. Is Anand being demonised because of his success?

Sanjana Jon says, “’’This demonisation is (happening) because he broke into an industry where Americans find difficult to break into.”

Her lawyer Majid Memon too said there was a possibility that ’’Anand’s phenomenal success raised a few eyebrows. They could not digest it and ’’connived’’ to implicate him in false cases. Racial discrimination could be a factor’’.

Memon, who has taken up several high profile briefs including defending music composer Nadeem in England, has said that they will approach the Prime Minister’s Office and ministry of External Affairs. "My first duty will be to approach the US attorneys, who till now had been defending him," he said. They will also approach the human rights commissions in India and in the US, besides other international human rights organisation.

There seems to be more to this case than what meets the eye. Complaints started pouring in after Wall Street Anand evaluated Anand at $10 million and more investors were going to pump in money into his company. There is absolutely no evidence to the allegations that he is facing but still Anand has been kept in solitary confinement and is chained in the Los Angeles jail.

Newsweek had picked this man as someone to watch out with Hillary Clinton and Barrack Obama on the cover. But since then he has been suffering in the jail based on numerous allegations that surfaced once he had convinced investors to invest in his company. Why did all these allegations come up suddenly? Was it a case of professional jealousy? Was it racial discrimination? These questions will be answered when the hearing off the case begins. Till then it will be tough to determine whether Anand is a villain or just a victim.

Evasive Orissa DGP Mohanty surrenders in Jaipur court

11 Jan, 2008, 0203 hrs IST, TNN

JAIPUR: Orissa DGP (Home Guards) Bidya Bhushan Mohanty, against whom a non-bailable warrant was issued by a local court for helping his son Bitti to jump parole in a rape case, surrendered before additional chief judicial magistrate Rajendra Bansal’s court, here on Thursday.

The court rejected the bail plea of Mohanty and remanded him in judicial custody till January 23. The Rajasthan police have charged him under Section 120B and 130 of the IPC for conspiracy to help a criminal escape from lawful custody. He is also charged under Sec 216 for harbouring an offender, who has escaped from custody.

Recently, the Supreme Court had ordered him to surrender within two weeks. Mohanty was suspended by the Orissa government, and immediately he went underground to evade arrest. His son Biti, who was sentenced to seven years of rigorous imprisonment and slapped a fine of Rs 10,000 for raping a German girl in Alwar in 2006, is still absconding, after let out on parole from November 20 to December 4, 2006. Both father and son were declared proclaimed offenders earlier by the same court.

Mohanty, sporting a beard and wearing pullover, appeared in the court with his counsel Mukesh Gupta, who submitted his bail application stating that under Sect 225 of the IPC Mohanty should be granted bail. But assistant public prosecutor V N Shukla argued that under Sect 225(2) there was no provision for bail.

Shukla further stressed that Mohanty has misused his power as a high police official and has been consistently evading arrest. Whenever the Jaipur police had tried to serve the warrant on him, he had used his influence and position to see that the warrant was not served. Shukla said Mohanty was charged with helping his son jump parole after he stood as the surety.

The defence counsel said Mohanty, was unwell and his 90-year-old mother was seriously ill. Mohanty has an unmarried daughter also, he added.The additional chief judicial magistrate, however, rejected the plea and ordered that he be kept in a secured place and not in the lock-up.

http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/PoliticsNation/Evasive_Orissa_DGP_Mohanty_surrenders_in_Jaipur_court/articleshow/2691127.cms

Man who spent 54 yrs in jail without trial is dead

It is a clear indication of the state of Judicial system in India that undertrials live in prisons for life long without any trial completed in their case. There are hundreds of thousands of such undertrials languishing in Indian jails...

Machang Lalung, who was kept under custody for more than half a century without a trial and forgotten, is dead.

Released in July 2005, the 77-year-old was beginning to savour freedom with his family in his village near Tezpur when death snatched him away.

Lalung was only 23 when he was arrested in 1951 for a petty crime and never faced a trial. He went on to serve almost 54 years initially in police custody and later on at the Tezpur Mental hospital.

Lalung was in custody for so long that he even forgot the reason why he was sent to jail in the first place.

“I feel happy to be with my family but I don’t remember why I was taken to jail,” Lalung said.

After living in an asylum for so long, Lalung could barely put his thoughts across. He lived his last days with his niece Sadhna Pator.

“I remember my mother telling me about him though I had never seen him before. See he lost his fingers after a fit of epilepsy in his younger days. Mother also spoke to us about his incident,” Sadhna Pator said.

Lalung was released from jail by sheer luck, after someone happened to spot him at the asylum at Tezpur, which was 90 kilometers from his village.

But for the 77-year-old justice came 54 years too late.

http://www.4to40.com/newsat4/index.asp?id=1239