6 Gujarat teachers get life term for gang raping Dalit student

Ahmedabad, Mar 7 : Six teachers of a college in Patan near here were awarded life terms by a special court for gang raping a 19-year-old Dalit student today, a year after the incident had led to public outrage in Gujarat.
Manish Parmar, Mahendra Prajapati, Ashwin Parmar, Kiran Patel, Suresh Patel and Atul Patel were pronounced guilty by Additional Sessions Judge S C Srivastava at Patan, about 125 km from here in north Gujarat.

The judge imposed a fine of Rs 4,000 on each of them and said failure to pay the amount would invite additional six- month imprisonment.

The court also directed the convicts to pay Rs 10,000 each to the girl, a student of the Primary Teachers' Training College (PTC), as compensation.

The incident at the state government-run college in Patan came to light on February 4, 2008 after the victim told her parents and relatives that she was repeatedly raped by the teachers over a period of six months.

The girl comes from a poor background and was a resident-student of the college.

She was threatened by the teachers that they will not give internal marks to her and fail her if she did not give in to their sexual advances, police had said