Muzaffarnagar, Oct. 19 (PTI): A court here today held Ali Mohammed guilty of raping his daughter-in-law Imrana, over a year after the case sparked a nation-wide furore when a panchayat ruled she should leave her husband.

In a packed courtroom, District and Sessions Judge R D Nimesh held Mohammed guilty for raping Imrana, a resident of Charthawal village in Uttar Pradesh. Soon after she was raped on June 6, 2005, a local panchayat asked Imrana, the mother of five children, to treat her husband Nur Ilahi as her son and declared their marriage null and void. Imrana defied the panchayat's ruling and continued living with her husband.

The leading Islamic seminary Darul-uloom Deoband also reportedly decreed that she could no longer live with her husband. But the seminary later denied it had issued any such fatwa.

Mohammed had been in judicial custody since June 16, 2005, three days after he was arrested for the rape.