23-Year-Old Journalist Gang-Raped in Mumbai

What happened at Shakti Mills?

A young journalist was gang-raped in Mumbai. This 23-year-old woman — a photojournalist intern with an English publication — was with a male colleague shooting for an assignment on August 22, 2013.

On the pretext of questioning her, some men asked her to come with them. They wanted to know if she had the required permits and permissions for shooting. Young and inexperienced, perhaps — she relented and followed the men who were taking her to get the permissions. Soon, a few others joined these men, and what followed was a brutal gang rape. Her male colleague was tied and gagged.

This event took place around 8 pm near Shakti Mills in Lower Parel, Mumbai. Lower Parel was once a textile-manufacturing area of South Mumbai, but over the years it has gone through a sea change. Now the place is abundant with malls, hip eateries, and plush residential complexes. In Mumbai, slums and condominiums sit side by side. This journalist was doing a story on chawls and slums.

She was admitted to Jaslok Hospital. Hospital reports revealed that she had suffered multiple injuries. She was brave enough to give a detailed account to the police.

Claiming to have cracked the case by nabbing one accused and identifying the other culprits, police commissioner Satyapal Singh said the others would be nabbed soon. According to Singh, the accused were in their early 20s and lived in the vicinity of the abandoned mill. Chief Minister Prithviraj Chavan announced that the state government would bear all the medical expenses of the victim and extend all possible help to her family.

What happened to the accused?

The case was cracked quickly — all five accused, including a juvenile, were arrested within a week. On March 20, 2014, a Mumbai sessions court convicted the four adult accused in the photojournalist's case. Three repeat offenders — Vijay Jadhav, Mohammad Qasim Shaikh, and Mohammad Salim Ansari — were awarded the death penalty, the first ever under the amended Section 376E of the Indian Penal Code introduced after the December 2012 Delhi gang rape. A fourth got life imprisonment; the juvenile was tried separately.

On November 25, 2021, the Bombay High Court commuted the three death sentences to life imprisonment for the remainder of their natural lives — observing that "every day the rising sun would remind them of the barbaric acts committed by them."

Shakti Mills gang rape — Wikipedia

Will this be just another story?

People will shout and raise hue and cry for a few weeks — media all around will write in detail about the pain of the victim — and then it would be forgotten. Because in India, the "chalta hai" attitude is the strongest of all.

The Shakti Mills case did see convictions, including the first-ever death sentences under the new repeat-offender law. But the deeper question remains: how many such stories end up in the news, and how many never do?