Bombay High Court upholds conviction of self-proclaimed Maulvi who sexually assaulted six minor girls

It is an unfortunate reality that people go to “tantrics / babas” for solution to their problems and they in turn take advantage of such people, the Bombay High Court recently lamented [Mehandi Kasim v. State of Maharashtra].A division bench of Justices Revati Mohite Dere and Manjusha Deshpande said that such tantrics and babas exploit the vulnerability of people by not only extracting money from them but also sexually assaulting them. The Court made these remarks while upholding conviction of a man, who represented himself to be a Maulvi and sexually assaulted intellectually challenged minor girls between 2005-2010. .“The appellant, a tantric/baba, on the pretext of curing the victim girls, sexually exploited them. It is an unfortunate reality of our times, that people, at times knock on the doors of so called tantrics/babas, for a solution to their problems and that these so called tantrics/babas, take advantage of the vulnerability and blind faith of these people and exploit them. The so called, tantrics/babas not only exploit their vulnerability, by extracting money from them, but also many a times, sexually assault the victims, under the guise of providing solutions,” the Court observed. .The appellant, Mehandi Kasim, approached the girls under the pretext of teaching them Quran. The six girls were children of 4 women who were sisters. The man became close with the one of the mothers who had an apprehension that their daughters might beget intellectually challenged male children; a trait which seemed to run on the maternal side of their family.The man assured the woman that he would 'treat his girls' and he called them to his place of residence between 2005 - 2010, where he not only sexually exploited the girls but also threatened them not to disclose the same to anyone. Tired of the assault, the girls informed the same to the parents and the man was arrested in November 2010. Apart from sexually assaulting the girls, the maulvi was also accused of sexually assaulting a maid who worked in one of the victim's house.The man denied having committed any of the acts and claimed that he was being falsely implicated due to a family dispute, where one of the mothers was alleged to have relations with him. .The sessions court at Mumbai in April 2017 convicted the man under sections 376 (rape), 354 (outraging modesty of a woman), 313 (non-consensual marriage), 323 (voluntarily causing hurt), 506 (criminal intimidation) and 420 (cheating) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC).The man was sentenced to life for the remainder of his life along with a fine of over ₹80,000.The man approached the High Court challenging this order..The High Court termed it a bizarre case of blind faith and found that the prosecution had, through evidence of the victims and their parents, duly proved the complicity of the appellant vis-a-vis sexual assault on the victims. “It is extremely unfortunate that 7 young girls, 6 minors and 1 maid were sexually exploited by the appellant, as the 6 minor girls’ mothers feared that the girls would beget intellectually challenged boys. The appellant took full advantage of the apprehension of the victims mothers and by manipulating their fears, assured to cure the girls and in the process, also financially exploited them,” the Court observed. .It also concluded that considering how the accused sexually assaulted seven persons, it was not proper to reduce the sentence to anything lesser than imprisonment for life.“The facts are gross, and the girls too many, and as such the sentence must be commensurate with the acts committed,” the Court concluded while dismissing the appeal..[Read Order]