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Mumbai: A Mumbai court
Monday cleared a high-ranking disgraced former police officer and
three others for their alleged involvement in the sensational
gang-rape 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.
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