The Hindu : National : “Rape of motherly figure shows depraved mind”

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“Rape of motherly figure shows depraved mind”

Staff Reporter

The two taxi drivers were more depraved than Dhananjoy: Delhi court

NEW DELHI: A court here has handed out capital punishment to two taxi drivers for brutally killing 59-year-old Australian tourist Dawn Emilie Griggs after criminally assaulting her and robbing her in March 2004. It also imposed a fine of Rs. 3,000 on each of them. On August 2, Jyotish Prasad and Ashish Kumar were convicted of murder, criminal assault, robbery and destruction of evidence.

“I award death sentence to both convicts under Section 302 of the Indian Penal Code. Both convicts shall be hanged till death,” Additional Sessions Judge Vinod Kumar said the packed Patiala House courtroom on Monday.

Drawing a parallel with Dhananjoy Chatterjee’s case, in which the Supreme Court awarded the death penalty to the perpetrator in 2004, Mr. Kumar said: “If the facts are seen closely, it would be found that the gravity of the present case is more than the case before the Supreme Court. In our case, the victim was of such an age that she should have been seen by the convicts as a motherly figure. Committing rape of an old lady shows a mind which is more depraved than Dhananjoy Chatterjee’s.”

Dhananjoy was sentenced to death for the criminal assault and murder of a minor girl in Kolkata in 1990. Griggs, who had arrived here from Australia via Hong Kong, was found murdered with stab injuries and her face smashed on a deserted field near the Indira Gandhi International Airport on March 17, 2004, hours after she took a pre-paid taxi from the airport. She had come to India to get enrolled in a meditation course.

The judge on August 2 said: “All the circumstances have been proved by the prosecution and lead to [the] irresistible conclusion that the accused subjected the foreigner to gang-rape and killed her after robbing her of valuables.” Investigations by a police team led by Inspector J. L. Meena revealed that Jyotish and Ashish brutally murdered her and then tried to decamp with her belongings, but later dumped the body at a distance from the scene of crime. As there was no eyewitness, the prosecution relied on circumstantial and forensic evidence, including the DNA reports of the drivers.

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