Rape of 16-yr-old: man sentenced to imprisonment until last breath

Surat: The Navsar special POCSO court sentenced a 35-year-old man to life imprisonment until his last breath for raping a 16-year-old schoolgirl three times within a time span of five hours. The man trapped her by assuring her to help her reach Mumbai, where she was intending to visit her social media friend, The Times of India reported.

Judge TS Brahmbhatt, sentencing the convict Mohammed Sadik Khatri, found that the sexual assault on the teen girl was an act of moral degradation. The court noted that the convict carried sex enhancement pills with him, which were recovered from him during his arrest, asserting his perverse mentality of preying on the helpless and children.

The court observed, "The sildenafil tablets containing vasodilator drugs from the accused indicate that they are sex enhancement pills which he carried with himself. This shows that he has a perverse psyche of preying on helpless minors like the victim of this case to fulfil his lust," TOI quoted.

As per the case, the girl from Valsad met a man from Bhiwandi in Maharashtra on ShareChat. They kept chatting for seven months, and on October 18, 2021, she left home after he insisted on meeting her. She met a man on a train she boarded to Mumbai, and he initiated a conversation with her. When the train stopped at the Umargam station, the convict forcibly took her out of the train, assuring her that he would help her to board a train to Mumbai from Navsari.

However, he took her to a deserted place after reaching Navsari and raped her thrice in the span of a few hours. Then he left the unconscious victim on a train to Mumbai, and when the train reached Vasai, she came back to consciousness, detrained and called her maternal uncle.