SURAT: A 35-year-old man was sentenced to life imprisonment until his last breath for raping a 16-year-old schoolgirl three times within a span of a few hours after assuring her that he would help her reach Mumbai, where she intended to visit her social media friend.
The Navsari special Pocso court judge, TS Brahmbhatt, observed that the sexual assault perpetrated by convict Mohammed Sadik Khatri in October 2021 was an ‘act of moral degradation.’ When arrested, the police also recovered sex enhancement pills from him, which the court said depicted his perverse mentality of preying on the helpless or children.
According to case details, the girl, who lived in Pardi taluka of Valsad, met a man from Bhiwandi in Maharashtra on ShareChat. After talking to him for seven months, she left her home on October 18, 2021, as he insisted on meeting her. She reached Vapi railway station and boarded a train to Mumbai. During the journey, she met a man who identified himself as Mohammad Sadik Khatri and initiated a conversation with her. When the train stopped at Umargam station, Khatri forcibly pulled her out of the train, assuring her that he would help her board a train to Mumbai from Navsari.
After arriving in Navsari, Khatri took her to a deserted place where he raped her around 7:30 pm. He then raped her twice again within a span of a few hours. Around 1am on October 19, he dropped her on a Mumbai-bound train, which stopped at Vasai, where she alighted and called her maternal uncle.
The Navsari rural police initiated a hunt for Khatri following the complaint lodged by the girl’s mother on October 24. When arrested, he was found in possession of sex enhancement drug sildenafil.
“The sildenafil tablets containing vasodilator drugs from the accused indicate that they are sex enhancement pills which he carried with himself. This shows that he has a perverse psyche of preying on helpless or minors like the victim of this case to fulfil his lust,” the court observed.
Assistant govt pleader AJ Tailor told TOI: “Police found his clothes which had blood stains on them. The police and forensic team also found the girl’s hair from the spot along with her hairpin and CCTV footage from various places.”
“When cases of sexual exploitation of minors are on the rise in society, the court must not adopt a lenient approach in sentencing. Understanding the pain of a minor victim requires a high degree of sensitivity. In such cases, the victim is often compelled to recount her ordeal multiple times to parents, the police, lawyers, and the court, which can be deeply distressing for her,” the court observed.
