Bengaluru: A special court in Ramanagar sentenced a factory worker to 20 years’ rigorous imprisonment after holding him guilty of raping a specially challenged minor girl in Kudur during Oct 2020. Also, the court sentenced an associate of his to five years of imprisonment after holding him guilty of recording the heinous act on his mobile and sharing it.The convicts are V Lokesh alias Loki, 29 and his associate R Guruprasad, 31. While Lokesh has been lodged in judicial custody at Ramanagara district prison since Oct 2020, Guruprasad had walked out on bail. Guruprasad was present in the court when the orders were passed by the special judge Panchakshari M, who also slapped fines of Rs 10,000 on Lokesh and Rs 5,000 on Guruprasad.Public prosecutor Veena N told TOI that Lokesh befriended the 15-year-old girl by luring her with money and raped her. “The survivor was taken into a dilapidated building near an agricultural land where Lokesh gagged her before raping her, while Guruprasad recorded it on his mobile phone,” she said.In mid-Oct, the survivor complained to her family of uneasiness and pain in her private parts. “When asked, the girl narrated the heinous act. At the same time, few villagers told a relative of the survivor that they had seen a video of the act, shared on a WhatsApp group of villagers,” Veena said.A complaint was lodged with Kudur police and the then police inspector Manjunath BS arrested Lokesh and Guruprasad. A senior police officer said, “During investigation, Manjunath discovered that Guruprasad had shared the video on a WhatsApp group. Manjunath called those villagers and took their statements. The villagers confessed that they had seen the video and after realising that it contained child pornography, they deleted it. Statements by four such villagers in the court played a vital role in identifying the miscreants and getting the conviction.”Further, public prosecutor Veena added that the survivor, even though she’s specially challenged, too made a clear statement before the court.
