Daijiworld Media Network – Bangalore (SP)
Bangalore, Feb 26: The state High Court, on Friday February 25, sentenced a lover from the city, who had defaced a girl’s face by spraying acid on her for not being inclined to favourably respond to his advances, to life imprisonment. It also ordered the person to pay a fine of five lac rupees to the girl in question.
Rajesh, who was unemployed after completing SSLC, had been pestering Shruti to love him. She had refused. Angered by the rejection, on August 12, 2002, when she was standing in Jayanagar fourth block bus stand here, Rajesh had sprayed acid on her.
The High Court rejected the appeal filed by Rajesh against the lower court order. At the same time, it upheld the prosecution’s plea for increasing the quantum of punishment to him. By taking a stern view of such inhuman and selfish acts, the High Court has sent a strong signal to the misguided youth.
The guilty has already served a sentence of six years, and has been released. The High Court has instructed him to surrender to the police. It has also ordered payment of five lac rupees as fine to the affected girl, failing which, the youth will have to undergo three more years behind the bars. It has warned that stern action will be taken if he fails to surrender to the police.
The division bench comprising Justice Manjula Chellur and Justice T N Keshavanarayan, while upwardly revising the punishment, felt that the lower court, while awarding six years of simple imprisonment to the youth, had just taken into account the state of the accused, without considering the plight of Shruti, the girl in question, whose life was devastated by this dastardly act. The punishment awarded by the lower court does not provide justice to the girl, it observed.
“Shruti lost her right eye in the acid attack. She is compelled to spend her life in suffering. The convict should at least pay for her medical expenses. Just because some donors came up with medical assistance to her does not exonerate the convict from the financial help he needs to extend to the victim,” the court said.