Bijal Joshi rape case: Five rapists convicted, awarded lifer

Justice delayed in the sensational Bijal Joshi gang-rape case, but at last not denied. A Sessions Court in Ahmedabad has convicted all the five accused-Sajal Jain, Sugam Jaiswal, Ashok Jaiswal, Chandan Jaiswal and Karan Jain for inflicting brutal torture and gang raping the victim, Bijal Joshi and awarded life imprisonment to all of them.

Additional Sessions judge Jyotsna Yagnik while pronouncing quantum of punishment to the convicts termed the convicts' crime as inhumane. While all the five accused have been awarded life imprisonment, the rest of the seven accused are acquitted for want of evidence.

Bijal Joshi, the 24-year-old Ahmedabad girl was punished for her love to boyfriend Sajal Jain, a Delhi-based businessman and son of the owner of Delhi’s Apollo Millennium Hospital, who accompanied by his friends not only gang raped her on the eve of 2004-New Year, but also inflicted beastly torture on her for the whole night. She was beaten, bitten and flogged into subjugation. Her back, arms, breasts and integral parts were burnt with cigarette butts. There was hardly a part of her body that had not borne burnt marks.

Seven days after she faced the terrible night of December 31, 2003 in her life, Bijal Joshi failing to bear enduring pain committed suicide on January 7, 2004. Sajal Jain, a 32-year-old and the father of two had befriend Bijal Joshi and invited her to Room No 106 of the Ashoka Palace on the night of December 31 to celebrate the New Year and raped her along with his four friends.

After her initial medical examination at the Civil Hospital on January 1, Bijal had been rushed and admitted to a private hospital by her sister for better treatment. She was in severe pain. Some of the Doctors, who checked her had said, “The injury marks were so awful that we could not sleep for days.”

Before committing suicide Bijal left suicide note behind her in which she named Sajal along with four others- Sugam, Chandan, Mandan and Karan alias Dharmendra Jain as responsible for her rape, torture and eventually suicide and wrote “all the five should not be spared.”

Sajal Jain was taken into custody on charges of rape and abetting suicide from his father's Apollo Hospital in New Delhi, where he was admitted in the ICU to evade arrest. Since then he was in police custody.

null