Mumbai court awards convict death penalty for rape, torture and murder of woman

The 32-year-old woman was raped and assaulted inside a tempo in suburban Mumbai’s Sakinaka

A court on June 2 awarded death penalty to a man convicted of rape, torture and murder of a 32-year-old woman in Sakinaka.

Eight months after the incident, Special Judge H. C. Shende convicted Mohan Chauhan, 45, for rape, murder, and under provisions of the Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe (Prevention of Atrocities) Act. Special Public Prosecutor Raja Thakare examined 37 witnesses.

While seeking capital punishment for Chauhan, the prosecution argued, “This is a diabolical attack on a hapless, lonely woman at odd hours of night, thereby raising fear for woman’s safety in a metropolitan city like Mumbai…the case squarely fits into the criteria of rarest of rare case, hence, capital punishment should be awarded to the accused.”

Eighteen days after the incident, the police had filed its chargesheet. The trial has been completed.

On September 10, 2021, police had received a call at 3.30 a.m. that a man was thrashing a woman on Khairani Road at Sakinaka. The police found the woman in a pool of blood. She was rushed to the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation’s (BMC) Rajawadi Hospital. The findings of a preliminary check-up stated that she had been raped and assaulted with an iron rod in her private parts inside a tempo. She succumbed to her injuries the next day. Chauhan was arrested soon thereafter.

He hails from Jaunpur in Uttar Pradesh and worked as a tempo driver. The then Police Commissioner of Mumbai, Hemant Nagrale, had said Chauhan and the victim had known each other and a financial dispute had led to a verbal argument between them, resulting in him raping her. They were both homeless and stayed on the same stretch of the road.