Uttarakhand HC halts drive to demolish house of 72-year rape accused

The Uttarakhand High Court on Friday halted the Nainital Municipal Corporation’s (NMC) exercise to demolish the house of 72-year old rape accused and contractor Mohammad Usman, who was arrested by the police on Wednesday night. Usman is accused of raping a 12-year old girl and her alleged sexual exploitation for three months.

Staying the municipal corporation’s notice to demolish Usman’s house alleged to have constructed illegally on forest land, the Nainital High Court pulled up the corporation for its failure to follow the SC directive to serve notice against illegal constructions 15 days in advance. The court questioned corporation’s intention for serving only 3-day notice to the accused.

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The Nainital Muncipal Corporation had issued notice to Usman for demolishing his house for being constructed on the forest land a day after an FIR was filed against him by the victim girl’s parent at Mallital Police Station.

As per the FIR, Usman had taken the girl with him for carrying out his household works when she was with her mother. There she was raped by the 72-year old man as she told her mother. On her return home, the victim was fear-struck, nervous and not in her proper health.

The girl narrated her mother all that she underwent at the hands of Usman. Later it was known that the accused had been sexually abusing her for the past three months. Besides Usman, NMC had also issued notices to several other houses in Rukkut area to vacate their houses constructed illegally on the government land.

Following the High Court’s stay, NMC has withdrawn the notice to the rape accused and others accepting its mistake for not honouring the Supreme Court’s guidelines in the matter. The state’s apex court asked the Naintal Police and the NMC to submit a compliance report of its orders in the next hearing on May 6.

Mohammad Usman’s counsel Kartikeya Hari Gupta had challenged the notice issued by the NMC notice to Usman, claiming that the Supreme Court had a clear guideline for 15-day mandatory notice mandatory before the demolition of encroachments but the NMC gave only three days time when the accused was in jail.

“This was contempt of the SC order,” said Gupta. The High Court also questioned how did the NMC know on May 1, a day after filing FIR against rape accused, that his house was built on encroached land.

The Nainital High Court expressed its displeasure over the police inaction in controlling the crowd that went berserk and vandalised shops and houses in the hill town on Wednesday night. Security forces and senior police officials failed to reach the site when the crowd took law on its hand.