Udupi, Dec 2: The Udupi district and sessions court has sentenced a 30-year-old man to 10 years of rigorous imprisonment for sexually harassing an 80-year-old woman and robbing her of 'mangalsutra', ear-rings, and cash.
Irfan (30), a native of Shivamogga, was convicted and fined Rs 50,000 by judge Dinesh Hegde.
The elderly woman from Tamil Nadu was living in Udupi city for the last 40 years. She used to pick scrap and sell it to the scrap dealer for a living and used to sleep in the vicinity of Sri Krishna mutt.
Irfan, working in a nearby chicken shop, sexually harassed the woman and robbed her of her gold ornaments and cash in June 2017, and escaped.
The woman was admitted to Udupi district hospital. Personnel from the women's police station took her statement and registered a case.
Irfan was taken into custody under body warrant from Bengaluru where he was jailed in connection with a murder case. The charge sheet was filed in the court in 2018.
The court started the hearing in April 2022. A total of 18 witnesses deposed before the court, which found him guilty.
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United Nations (PTI): A spokesperson for UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has said the world body "hopes" that in India and any country that is having elections, people's "political and civil rights" are "protected" and everyone is able to vote in a "free and fair" atmosphere.
Spokesperson for the Secretary-General Stephane Dujarric made these remarks on Thursday while he was responding to a question on the "political unrest" in India ahead of the upcoming national elections in the wake of the arrest of Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal and the freezing of the opposition Congress Party's bank accounts.
"What we very much hope that in India, as in any country that is having elections, that everyone's rights are protected, including political and civil rights, and everyone is able to vote in an atmosphere that is free and fair," Dujarric said at the daily press briefing Thursday.
The response from the United Nations comes a day after the US also reacted to a similar question on Kejriwal's arrest and freezing of the Congress party's bank accounts.
On Wednesday, hours after India summoned a senior US diplomat to protest remarks on Kejriwal's arrest, Washington reiterated that it encourages fair, transparent, timely legal processes.
On the US diplomat being summoned in Delhi, US State Department Spokesperson Matthew Miller said "I'm not going to talk about any private diplomatic conversations. But of course what we have said publicly is what I just said from here, that we encourage fair, transparent, timely legal processes. We don't think anyone should object to that, and we'll make the same thing clear privately."
Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) officials summoned Acting Deputy Chief of Mission Gloria Berbena to their office in South Block in the Indian capital. The meeting lasted for more than 30 minutes.
On Thursday, India said the US State Department's recent remarks on the arrest of Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal are "unwarranted" and asserted the country is "proud of its independent and robust democratic institutions" and committed to protect them from any form of undue external influences.
Any "external imputation" on India's electoral and legal processes is "completely unacceptable", MEA Spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal said in New Delhi during his weekly press briefing.
In India, legal processes are driven "only by the rule of law", Jaiswal said on Thursday.
Earlier on Wednesday, the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) had said in a statement that India took strong objection to the remarks of the Spokesperson of the US State Department about certain legal proceedings in India.
"India's legal processes are based on an independent judiciary which is committed to objective and timely outcomes. Casting aspersions on that is unwarranted," the MEA had said.
The Enforcement Directorate has arrested Kejriwal in a money laundering case linked to the excise policy 'scam'.
The case pertains to alleged corruption and money laundering in formulating and executing the Delhi government's excise policy for 2021-22 which was later scrapped.