Mumbai: A Mumbai court on Monday cleared a high-ranking disgraced former police officer and three others for their alleged involvement in the sensational gangrape case involving a minor girl in Powai around two years ago, a legal official said.
The accused, Arun Borude (55), was a former encounter specialist and was the head of LT Marg police station in south Mumbai when the incident occurred early 2010, said his lawyer Naveen Chomal.
Immediately after the incident came to light - shocking Mumbaikars and embarrassing the police department - Borude was sacked from the Mumbai police force.
On the run since the incident, on Dec 29 that year (2010), Borude`s body was found under mysterious circumstance beside the railway tracks in Shrirampur, Ahmednagar district in western Maharashtra, in a case of suspected suicide.
Besides Borude, three others allegedly involved in the same case, Mohanchand Premchand Shyam (45), Chandrabhan Satynarayan Gupta (45) and Shantabai Gaikwad, who was accused of luring the victim who cannot be identified for legal reasons, were also acquitted by sessions Judge Sadhana Malpani-Pawar Monday for lack of evidence, Chomal said.
"The prosecution failed to prove its case and even the victim and her family failed to support the charges levelled by vested interests inimical to Borude," Chomal added.
According to the prosecution, Borude, along with five others, had allegedly raped the girl in a Powai flat many times over two months in February-March 2010.
The incident was exposed after the victim, said to be 15 years old at the time, delivered a child at a hospital in Powai, north-central Mumbai, in October 2010.
The DNA samples of the baby matched with those of one of the accused, Mohanchand P. Shyam, who was a realty agent in the area.
After the case was registered against Borude and his accomplices in November 2010, the police official went on leave and then went underground even as a sessions court and later the Bombay High Court rejected his pleas for anticipatory bail, said Chomal.
He remained untraceable till his body was found near the railway tracks.
IANS
