On Tuesday, four out of the five minors who were arrested in early June for gang-raping a 16-year-old girl kidnapped from a Hyderabad pub were granted bail by the Nampally criminal court complex’s juvenile justice board. The Board however denied the bail plea of the fifth juvenile because his bail petition was pending before the High Court.
According to the reports, the fifth juvenile is the son of a law-maker who was involved in a serious crime against a 16-year-old girl in Hyderabad. The Court also rejected to grant bail to Saduddin Malik who is the prime accused in the case. The five youngsters had filed separate bail requests with the juvenile board twice in June, but they both had been denied. On Tuesday, however, the four were granted bail on the provision of a Rs 5,000 surety.
The Nampally criminal court complex’s juvenile justice board while granting the bail ordered the four to cooperate with the investigators and to appear in court whenever they are summoned. Saduddin Malik, the prime accused in the case was arrested by the Police on June 3 and was housed in the Chanchalguda jail while the five other minor accused were put in the custody of the juvenile court.
On 28th May 2022, a 17-year-old minor girl had gone to attend a party at the Amnesia and Insomnia Pub in Jubilee Hills, Hyderabad. The party was hosted by two of her friends. Some other boys also had met her in the same pub, from where she was taken in a Mercedes car and allegedly gang-raped by the accused. The Mercedes car in which the girl left the pub belongs to a TRS leader and an Innova car in which the crime took place belonged to a Waqf Board functionary.
It may be recalled that the Hyderabad police had on June 9, said that they will be pushing for the under-18 accused to be tried as adults so that they do not get lighter punishment on account of being juveniles. However, the four were granted bail on July 27. Earlier reports had emerged about how politically influential families of the five accused were using their political clout and influence to pressurize the victim’s family to drop charges against the accused.
Earlier, the Hyderabad police while investigating the case had confirmed that the all accused had clinically planned the entire crime. They were carrying condoms and even used them while raping the 17-year-old girl in a moving car on the night of May 28. “They even had condoms on them and used protection while committing the offense. We are trying to ascertain where they got the condoms from,” the Police official had said.
In the stated case, all the accused minors are between the ages of 16 and 18, with one of them, the son of an AIMIM MLA, just a month short of becoming 18. The police had charged the accused under sections 376-D (gang rape), 323 (causing harm), and 376 (kidnapping) of the Indian Penal Code. A second charge was filed under the Information Technology Act for recording the rape and distributing the images and video.
