Lucknow, October 20
Fifty-five-year-old Mohammad Ali of Charthawal village in Muzaffarnagar was sentenced to 10 years imprisonment and fined Rs 10,000 for raping his daughter-in-law, a mother of five, in the much-talked about rape case last year.

According to the survivor’s lawyer Sitaram Verma, the order passed in the court of Muzaffarnagar District Judge R.D. Nimesh today declared that in case the convict failed to pay the fine, his imprisonment would be increased by another three years.

The 10-year imprisonment was under the IPC Section 376 (punishment for rape) and another three years under Section 506 (punishment for criminal intimidation) would run simultaneously. Of the Rs. 10,000 to be paid in cash, the survivor would receive Rs 8,000 as damages.

The case received wide media attention after an “extra judicial” caste panchayat had decided that the rape survivor had become ‘impure’ as her husband had now become her ‘son’ and that she could marry the ‘rapist’.

Despite immense social pressure on the daughter-in-law to keep quiet, she not only dared to walk out of her martial home along with her husband and children, but also filed a criminal case against her father-in-law. He was arrested on June 15, 2005, three days after the filing of the FIR, and has since then remained behind bars in the Muzaffarnagar district jail.

According to the survivor’s brother-in-law Nafees, the survivor has been crying since the time she heard the judgment. “Mujhe to dono taraf se thes lagti hai” (I am affected from both sides) she reportedly told visitors.