Man found guilty of groping girl after 4 yrs

MUMBAI: A special court convicted a 24-year-old labourer on Monday for groping a girl in Goregaon (East) four years ago.

As per the prosecution, the girl was 10 years old in June 2014. When she stepped out to relieve herself at night, the labourer touched her inappropriately. The suspect was identified as Venkatesh Devendra and was soon arrested by the police.

The prosecution examined six witnesses, including the girl’s mother, in support of its case against Devendra. The defence argued the prosecution could not prove the girl’s age using a bonafide certificate and owing to darkness at the time of the incident, she could not verify the man’s identity.

The court accepted the defence’s plea that it could not be ascertained that she was a minor when she was harassed.

Therefore, the accused was acquitted of the charges levelled under section 8 of the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act .

But the court convicted him under section 354 of the IPC for outraging a woman’s modesty. Since Devendra had already spent three years in jail as an undertrial, the court , following its sentencing, ordered him to pay a fine of ₹5,000. MUMBAI: The Matunga police have arrested five people from Delhi last week for allegedly cheating a 68-year-old retiree, Mohan Korgaonkar, of ₹93.59 lakh. The arrested are identified as Rajendra Singh, 34, Sachin Sirohi, 28, Anupkumar Agrahari, 25, Vikrant Singh, 26, and Prashant Chaudhari 25.

The accused pretended to be officials of a private investment firm and under the guise of providing personal loan and fixed deposits at low interest rate, took ‘processing fee’ from to Korgaonkar on several occasions.

After Korgaonkar found something amiss, he approached the Matunga police station where a case was registered against 12 people on May 29.

N Ambika, deputy commissioner of police, zone IV said, “We have found similar cases are registered at DB Marg, Dadar and Dongri police stations in Mumbai and also at police stations in Panvel, Nashik and Nagpur.”

“We asked Korgaonkar to provide us with the numbers from which he received calls from the accused. We then tracked the last mobile number active in the area and followed it,” said police sub-inspector Maruti Shelke who is investigating the case. “We found that the bank account to which certain amounts had been transferred by Korgaonkar was in the name of a friend of one of the arrested accused, Sachin. The police busted the gang after tracking down Sachin’s friend.”

Korgaonkar transferred cash 61 times from 16 different bank accounts of the gang. N AMBIKA, deputy commissioner of police, zone IV