A special fast track court on Thursday sentenced filmmaker Mahmood Farooqui to seven years imprisonment, held guilty of raping a research scholar from the United States in Delhi last year.
Additional Sessions Judge Sanjiv Jain, who had found Farooqui guilty under section 376 (punishment for rape) of the IPC – awarded minimum punishment of seven years in jail.
He also imposed a fine of Rs. 50,000 on him to be paid to the rape victim, failing which he would have to undergo an additional imprisonment of three months.
The court had on July 30 held Mr Farooqui guilty of raping the American woman last year at his house in a drunken state. The filmmaker, who at the time of the conviction was out on bail, was taken into custody soon after the court found him guilty.
During the arguments on sentence earlier, Delhi Police had sought life imprisonment for the filmmaker, saying the crime has brought “disrepute” to India.
Mr Farooqui’s counsel Nitya Ramakrishnan had said as the filmmaker suffered from bipolar disorder and has fully cooperated in the case he should be given a chance to reform.
Seeking stringent punishment for Mr. Farooqui, the complainant’s counsel Vrinda Grover had said, “The foreigner was here for research work but was raped by a person she knew, who was her friend and whom she had trusted”.
The case relates to the March 28, 2015 rape of a 35-year-old American, a student at New York’s Columbia University, who was in the Capital for research work on her doctoral thesis. During her deposition as a prosecution witness in the court, the woman alleged that Farooqui raped her and later apologised via several e-mails exchanged between them. Farooqui denied the allegations and said he was falsely implicated.
