On November 7, 2022, the Supreme Court acquitted all three convicts who had been awarded death sentence by a Delhi court for the 2012 rape and murder of a 19-year-old woman in the Chhawala neighbourhood of Delhi.
BREAKING: #SupremeCourt acquits three in the 2012 gangrape and murder case of a 19-year-old girl. The three accused were awarded death penalty by the lower court which was affirmed by the #DelhiHighCourt in 2014.
— LawBeat (@LawBeatInd) November 7, 2022
In February 2014, a Delhi court convicted three men to death after finding them guilty of brutally raping and killing a 19-year-old woman in 2012. On August 26, 2014, the Delhi High Court upheld the death punishment, declaring that the accused were “predators” roaming the streets and “looking for prey.”
The incident pertains to February 2012, about 10 months before the Nirbhaya incident took place, but it did not attract media attention to the extent that the latter did. The deceased victim’s family, who had been yearning for justice, said today that they were heartbroken by the verdict delivered by the Supreme Court. The bereaved mother of the 19-year-old expressed disappointment that the Supreme Court announced the ruling without providing any explanation for its decision and stated that they do not know which door to knock on now in order to pursue justice.
2012 के छावला गैंगरेप और बर्बर हत्या के दोषियों को SC ने बरी कर दिया है, निचली अदालत और हाईकोर्ट ने राहुल, रवि और विनोद को फांसी की सज़ा दी थी.
— Shivam Pratap Singh (@journalistspsc) November 7, 2022
ये तीनों आरोपी लड़की को गाड़ी में उठाकर ले गए थे,गैंगरेप के बाद लड़की की आंखों में तेजाब डाल दिया गया था. पिता एक स्कूल में चौकीदार है. pic.twitter.com/bVRkMHwtSE
2012 Chhawala gang rape case
On February 9, 2012, three assailants kidnapped the girl from a spot just minutes away from their house in Qutub Vihar Phase-2 in Delhi. The girl was an immigrant from Pauri Garhwal in Uttarakhand, resided in Qutub Vihar, Phase II in Dwarka in southwest Delhi with her parents and two younger brothers. She wanted to be a teacher and was pursuing her graduation at a college in Delhi. She also worked in Gurgaon’s Cyber City as a data input operator to augment her father’s low salary. On that fateful night, the girl was on her way back home from work with three female colleagues who lived in the same neighbourhood.
The girls were dropped off by a bus at around 8:30 PM in the evening. From there, they were supposed to walk through a mesh of lanes to reach their respective homes. When they reached a roundabout at Hanuman Chowk, three individuals in red Indica accosted them and started making lewd remarks to them. Unnerved by the men, the girls cried for help. But no one came forward to their rescue. Then three men hustled the girl into the car and sped away.
She was then taken to a mustard field some 30 kilometres away in the Haryana village of Rodhai where the three perpetrators- Ravi, Vinod and Rahul took their turns to brutally rape and brutalise her.
Perpetrators inflicted brutalities on the victim
It took the police three days to arrest the perpetrators. All three were residents of the same neighbourhood as the girl and had been released from Tihar Jail just a few days before the incident
The interrogation of the three accused revealed chilling details of the fate that had befallen the girl. The accused had reportedly mutilated and poured acid into the victim’s eyes, inserted a broken liquor bottle into her vagina and abandoned her in the mustard field in Haryana to die. According to the girl’s autopsy, she had died on February 13, a few hours before her body was recovered. For more than three days, the girl bled to death and the forensics test confirmed rape.
Shocking callousness and apathy shown by the police and the then Delhi CM Sheila Dixit: Victim’s father
The victim’s family had reported the kidnapping on the very same night. The grieving father of the girl was taken aback by the apathy displayed by the police personnel who had come there to investigate the kidnapping. “Get us a car and then we will follow the kidnappers,” one of the police officials reportedly scoffed at the girl’s father.
Enraged by this callousness, a raft of protesters decided to demonstrate outside the Chhawla police station. About 300 protesters staged a sit-in outside the police station for the next three days despite the police officials raining blows and lathis on them.
The victim’s father ran pillar to post seeking justice for his daughter. He approached the then Delhi Chief Minister Sheila Dixit for help but was shunned away saying, “such incidents keep happening”. He claimed that the officials at the Chief Minister’s Office handed him a cheque of Rs one lakh and asked him to leave. Apart from this, no other assistance or compensation of any kind was given to him.
He also stated that neither Arvind Kejriwal, nor Rahul Gandhi took interest in a demonstration for his daughter. “I went to Delhi’s Jantar Mantar to mark my protest against the treatment meted out to my daughter. On one side, Arvind Kejriwal was giving a speech. On the other hand, Rahul Gandhi was participating in a sit-in protest. None of them came and expressed their solidarity with me,” he lamented.
