BHOPAL : A 46-year-old woman in Madhya Pradesh and her 29-year-old son-in-law have been sentenced to 10 years in jail for falsely accusing their four neighbours of gang rape and fabricating evidence in support of her allegation, a senior public prosecutor said on Thursday.
The woman and her son-in-law were in a relationship and decided to frame their four neighbours in 2014 because she did not get along with them, additional district prosecutor Mohammad Azam of Ashok Nagar district, 150km from state capital Bhopal, said.
The four neighbours, however, called her bluff during investigations into the First Information Report (FIR) registered on her statement in August 2014 when they persuaded investigators to carry out a DNA test to compare the semen sample from the woman’s clothes with that of her son-in-law, Gopal Rajak.
Ashok Nagar’s first additional sessions judge Mahesh Kumar Chauhan on Wednesday sentenced the woman, Guddi Ojha and her son-in-law Gopal Rajak to serve 10 years in prison for fabricating evidence to secure a conviction and criminal conspiracy, six months jail for giving false information to a public servant.
Public prosecutor Jafar Qureshi said this was a rare case where the police charged a woman for filing a false case and fabricating evidence and pursued the case to its logical conclusion. The defence lawyer was not available for comments.
“In August 2014, the woman, who lost her husband in 2011, filed a complaint that she was gang-raped by four people who lived in her neighbourhood. Police arrested the accused after lodging the FIR under section 376 D. The medical report of the woman confirmed rape and her clothes and vaginal swab were taken for further investigation,” Qureshi said.
The accused, however, insisted they were innocent and approached senior Ashok Nagar police officer to seek a DNA test to establish the truth.
“The test report revealed that the woman was not raped by any of the four but by some other person,” the prosecutor said. At their request, the police also took samples of the son-in-law.
“Gopal Rajak’s sample matched with the sperm samples collected from the woman’s clothes.”
Gopal Rajak was arrested.
“During interrogation, Gopal Rajak confessed that he was in a relationship with Guddi and they filed a false case to implicate their neighbours, who used to fight with Guddi and Gopal on trivial issues,” police officer VP Singh Jat, who investigated the case, said.
“It was a serious case as the woman alleged that the four accused barged into her house and raped her in the night,” said the police officer, recalling how the closely-watched case in the district by politicians and activists took a stunning turn.
“During investigations, we also found many witnesses who said the four accused were not present at the same place together but it was DNA test which conclusively exposed the fraud…. We are happy that we succeed in punishing the woman and the man for abusing the law,” VP Singh Jat said.
Source : https://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/mp-woman-falsely-accused-4-neighbours-of-gang-rape-sentenced-to-10-years-101635426415800.html