All 9 convicts get life sentences for sexual assaults in Pollachi

 CHENNAI: A Coimbators court on Tuesday convicted and sen unced nine men to the morn met autil druth in the chi sexual asuult case, which had sent shockwaves across Tamil Nadu after incidents of gang rape filming sexual comes and extorting multiple survivors came to light is 2009.

The verdict in the case, which had stained political overtones at noe of the accused was a polit w the ical party ruling Dravida wada Munnetra Katha zam (DMK) and rival AIADMK hit out at each other ove women's safety during their Hespective rules

Coimbatore women's court Jadige RNardhins Devs, who pro nounced the quantam of punate meat, ordered an overall com pensation of of 295 lakh to the right women victims, who testi whetesti fied in the cuse from Pollachia small scenic town about 44km from Courbetare

The nine men were acttoed of criminal conspiracy, scrual har assment, rape, ging rape, and extortion, in the series of inci dents that happened between 2006 and 2018 and came to light a year later. They have been convicted on two major offences under sections 3760 (gangrape) and 376(2)(3) (repeated rape on the same woman) of the erst while) Indian Penal Code (IPC) special public prosecutor V Sur endra Mohan told reporters after the verdict.

They were given "life impris woment till death, as sought by the Clit, which probed the mat ter. Mohan added Earlier in the day, the nine accused-N Rashwanth alias Satatirajan (26) K Thirunavuk karam (28) N Sathish (30), T Vasanthakumar (25), & Mani vannan alias Mani (31). KA lananthem (34) P Babu alias Bike Babu (27), Haronimus Paul (29), and M Arunkumar (29) were brought to the court amid tight security from Salem cestral prison, where they have been lodged since their arrest in 2019,

A total of 48 witnesses were examined by the prosecution and none of them turned hostile, Mohan said. The defence had sought ienancy for the convicts on grounds of their young age and aged parents. The court, and aged parents however, sentenced them to life imprisonment for the remainder of their natural life.

The case came to light after one of the survivors, a 19 year old college student, lodged a sex ual assault complaint with the police in February 2019 against four accused. She had alleged that the accused she had befriended sexually assaulted her inside a car, filmed the act and threatened to leak the video.

 During the probe, it was found to be the modus operandi -the accused luring the victims, mostly college-going young women, sexually assaulting them either in cars or after tak ing them to secluded areas. The men were also accused of film-ing some of their acts and using it to blackmail the survivors.

Initially, the local Pollachi police investigated the crime.After the then Coimbatore SP, R Pandiarajan, disclosed the name of the complainant which activists believe dissuaded many survivors from filing complaints - the case was first transferred to CB-CID and later to CBI in April 2019.

The case took a political col-our after it came to light that one of the accused, Arulanantham, was a functionary of AIADMK, which was in power when the crime happened. The AIADMK was quick to expel Arulanan-tham from the party after his name surfaced in the crime. The case triggered massive protests by residents seeking strict action against the accused, and it echoed in the legislative assem-bly as recently as last month.