Whatsapp chat used as evidence to convict three law students for rape
June 06, 2017In a rare instance of using electronic data as evidence, the trial court has convicted three law students of Global University of Jindal in Sonepat for gangraping and blackmailing a junior of the same university.
The conviction was done by relying on the extensive and detailed WhatsApp conversation between the rape victim and the law students. All three accused were convicted on May 24. The main accused Hardik Sikri and Karan Chhabra has been convicted for 20 years each for gangraping and blackmailing a junior management student for about two years. The third accused, Vikas Garg was convicted for a seven-year jail term.
The Additional Sessions Judge Sunita Grover said in her judgement that “The WhatsApp chats running into pages is so abusive and vulgar that the extracts of the same cannot be explained and put into the judgment and what only can be concluded through the WhatsApp chat is that the prosecutrix (victim) was totally under control and dominance of the accused, Hardik.”
Further, Hardik has stored victim’s nude images in a web storage platform, Apple’s I-cloud and also circulated these images amongst his friends through free messaging service.
Hardik also constantly threatened the victim of making these images public by uploading them to university's website. He was also held guilty for circulating obscene material.
It was categorically proved through WhatsApp conversation that the victim was under “stress” and “duress” to share her nude pictures with him. Besides this, he even forced the victim to purchase a sex toy so that he could watch her via Skype. He forced and took her to Chandigarh for having sex.
The defence counsel argued that the victim was a consensual partner as she volunteered to consume drugs and going to Chandigarh.
However, these arguments were rejected by the court as the accused was in the dominating position.
Probably this verdict is one of its kind which is exclusively relied on electronic data as evidence.