State fast-tracked gangrape case 6 yrs ago, no verdict yet

Mumbai:CM Devendra Fadnavis may have announced that the Ahmednagar rape-murder case will be speeded up, but a case fast-tracked by former home minister R R Patil in 2010 after an uproar in the legislative assembly is still awaiting a verdict.
In 2010, a 41-year-old Pune-based government employee was gangraped and assaulted by five men in Dhanora village in Beed district.
The woman had gone to Parli temple in Beed with her husband, 19-year-old son and two house help, and was returning home in a car when the accused blocked their way at a spot near the Beed-Ahmednagar border.They forcibly got everybody else out of the car, drove the woman to a farm in Dhanora, threatened to kill her when she tried to resist, and gangraped her.
They later left her in the farm and fled towards Ahmednagar. A farmer who found her in the morning helped her get in touch with her husband. The woman then lodged a complaint at Ambore police station.
“After the incident, the government had announced that the case would be handled by a special MCOCA court and fast- tracked. It’s been six years and we are still waiting for justice. The incident itself was so traumatic, the unnecessary delay in the verdict has made things worse for us,” said the survivor.
Since the accused had even earlier been involved in heinous crimes, the government decided to book them under MCOCA, and the case was being heard in a MCOCA court in Aurangabad.
“It’s been over two years since we (she and her husband) have been examined and more than three months since the public prosecutor ended her arguments,” she said. Since the case was being heard in an Aurangabad court, it was cumbersome for the woman to take leave and travel every time the hearing would come up. This became tougher as her teenaged son slipped into severe depression after the incident.
“It took me ten months to get out of my house post the incident, but by that time my only child was battling severe depression. Looking back at the last six years, I feel like I should have died post the incident, rather than dying every day,” the survivor said.
Shiv Sena legislator Neelam Gorhe, who has met the survivor and had also taken up the issue of giving her medical assistance with defence minister Manohar Parrikar, said, “There is provision for medical assistance for women for minor ailments and accidents, but in her case she wasn’t eligible and so we had met the defence minister, who had promised assistance.”
She also said there has to be a time limit on closing a case, else the word ‘fast-track’ would not mean anything.
“There has to be regular monitoring of such cases by the government to ensure the victims get justice as soon as possible. There are examples where cases have been completed in less than a month, but then there are cases like this one as well,” said Gorhe.
There are 27 fast-track courts in the state, and 22 special courts have been set up. The CM, while replying to a demand that there should be a time-bound result in such cases, said, “Even I tried to see if there can be a time limit fixed for hearing of such cases, but there are some directions from the Supreme Court in different cases which don’t allow for fixing of time.”