By IANS,
Chandigarh : Five youth from Haryana were convicted by a court here Tuesday for the gang-rape of a young German tourist visiting the city in September last year.
Pankaj, Manvir Singh Jolly, Harpreet Singh, Sompal and Sukhwinder Singh, all from well-to-do families from neighbouring Haryana, were charged with rape, kidnapping and criminal intimidation.
The court held a daily trial of the high-profile case from Jan 16 and took only seven working days to convict them.
The sentences will be announced Wednesday.
The victim, who flew to India to depose in the case, was examined in the court for two days where she said that she was gang-raped.
She had, earlier in September, told the police that she had only been molested after being kidnapped.
The court here last month had framed charges of rape against the five youths who had allegedly sexually assaulted her after picking her up from the Taj Hotel in Sector 17 at about 2 a.m.
The young men had allegedly taken the German tourist in their black Scorpio SUV from the parking area of the hotel. She was taken to a farmhouse in Haryana’s Ambala district, 60 km from here, where she was sexually assaulted for several hours before being dropped in Sector 20 here by one of the men the next evening.
She had come here with a Germany-based Indian friend to attend his wedding. The victim had gone to the Taj Hotel for coffee after having food and drinks at another place.
While her two friends sat in the hotel’s coffee shop, she came out in the parking lot to smoke. It was here that she got talking to one of the youth who offered to let her drive the SUV. Later, his other friends joined and they drove her away from the city.