2 weeks Ago By Asseem Shaikh
Pune: The state prosecution on Tuesday told a city court that Shoaib alias Akhtar Babu Shaikh, the main accused in the Oct 3 gang rape of an event management student (21) in Bopdev ghat, misled the police by giving fictitious names of himself and the third suspect from Baramati, still wanted in the case. Assistant public prosecutor Aamrapali Kasture submitted that the police needed to take Shaikh (27) to Latur, from where he hails, and his in-laws' place in Nagpur to verify his Aadhaar card and birth certificate documents to establish his genuine name. This was after the police found discrepancies in his father's name given by Shaikh, she submitted.
The prosecutor said investigations revealed that Shaikh gave a fictitious name of the wanted suspect and the police had established his actual identity. The police wanted to find out the wanted suspect's whereabouts and arrest him after interrogating Shaikh and the other arrested accused, Chandrakumar Raviprasad Kanaujia (20), she submitted. The police needed to confront the two arrested accused in custody to unravel all details of the crime, including their whereabouts before and after the crime, the places they visited, identify witnesses and if any other person helped them while they were on the run, she submitted.
The prosecutor told the court that the police also needed to establish if the two accused and their wanted accomplice were part of similar crimes in the past. Judicial magistrate first class AA Kulkarni ordered custodial remand of Shaikh and Kanaujia till Nov 8. Earlier on Monday, the city crime branch had secured the duo's custody from the Yerawada central prison, where they were lodged under magisterial custody.
The rape survivor, from a city in Gujarat and pursuing studies in Pune, and her friend (22), a chartered accountancy student from north Maharashtra, had gone to Bopdev Ghat on a night out around 11pm on Oct 3. An hour later, three men approached them near the "Table Point". They assaulted the young woman's friend before raping her.
The police made their first arrest in the case on Oct 11 in the form of Kanaujia, a labourer from Kadnagar in Undri, and followed up with the arrest of Shaikh, a ragpicker from Adarshnagar at Mantarwadi near Phursungi, from Prayagraj in a coordinated action with the Uttar Pradesh special task force. Shaikh has been identified as the ringleader of the three-men group, who committed the gang rape. The city recently witnessed a spate of criminal incidents on its hills, including Baner hill and Hanuman tekdi.
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