As reported in ZEENEWS on Tuesday, July 14, 2009
A local court on Monday extended till July 20 the judicial custody of the six accused in the TISS gang rape case even as police said it had statements of over 35 witnesses in the 300-odd page chargesheet filed in this regard.
Six persons have been charged with gang-raping a 23- year-old US national, who was a student of the city-based Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS), in April.
The accused — Vinamra Soni, Jaskaran Singh Bhullar alias Karan, Harshawardhan Yadav, Anish Borkataki and Kundan Borgonain — were today given a copy of the chargesheet and their judicial custody was extended till July 20.
According to the testimony given by the victim’s close friend Rishab Choksi, the girl had called him up on April 14 stating that she was gang raped.
Choksi recalled the conversation he had with the victim a day before the incident happened when the victim was out with the six accused and her friend Annie Brown.
“On April 12 between 2 am and 5.30 am, I received a missed all from the victim. When I called her back, she said that she was with five boys in a flat at Andheri (a western suburb). She asked me to come but I told her that I was in South Mumbai and thus could not go,” Choksi said.
He further said that on April 14 when he was in Kolkata, the victim called him and said that the five boys had raped her and told him that she was on her way to the police station to lodge a complaint.
Another key witness, Annie Brown, who had accompanied the victim and the accused to a cafe in Deonar (where TISS is located) on the night of the offence, has told the police that it was just a friendly get together between a bunch of friends.
Autorickshaw drivers, who had dropped the five accused and the victim to the flat of co-accused Kundanraj in Andheri, supported the prosecution and the victim’s story.
While the victim had returned to her house in the US and secured admission in a college, the police are primarily relying on the statements of these witnesses and medical evidence to prove their case.
