Speeding up the legal proceedings in the photojournalist’s gangrape case that triggered a nationwide outrage, the Mumbai police is all set to file a chargesheet against the five accused in a couple of days.
“We are giving the final touches to the chargesheet of the gangrape case with whatever evidence we have collected so far. We are working on filing it before the concerned court by Tuesday,” a crime branch official said on Sunday. “If we come across some more evidence at a later stage, we will file a supplementary chargesheet,” the official said, adding that the state’s legal department had also helped them ensure that there is no loophole in the chargesheet.
The move comes against the backdrop of clamour for speedy trial in the case. The victim was allegedly gangraped by the five on August 22 evening when she had gone to the Shakti Mills compound with a male colleague on an assignment, the police said. On September 10, state home minister R.R. Patil had stated that the Mumbai police would file a chargesheet in a week’s time. The chargesheet will have the details of the victim’s ordeal, witnesses’ statements, crucial evidence collected from the spot, DNA analysis reports, phone call records and identification parade information, among others, the police said.
The police claimed they have more than sufficient evidence against the five arrested accused — Salim Ansari, Vijay Jadhav, Mohammed Kasim Hafiz Shaikh alias Kasim Bengali, Siraj Rehman Khan and a minor. The government wants the case to be fasttracked so that the culprits are given harsh punishment at the earliest.
A strong piece of evidence is the DNA report which confirmed involvement of all the five accused. Officials from the Forensic Sciences Laboratories in Mumbai, Delhi and Ahmedabad are expected to send their reports to the investigating authority soon. While the Mumbai and Delhi teams have focused on samples from the crime scene, the Ahmedabad team has recorded voice samples of the five accused.