New Delhi: Julius Kitbok Dorphang, former MLA from Mawhati in Meghalaya, has been sentenced to 25 years imprisonment for raping a 14-year-old girl in 2017, NDTV reported on Wednesday.
Dorphang was sentenced by F.S. Sangma, a special judge who specifically adjudicates on Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act cases in Ri-Bhoi, the district from where Dorphang was elected to the state legislative assembly.
According to a report by the Shillong Times, the judgement had been pronounced on August 13 and the charges read on August 24, which also included a fine of Rs 15 lakh in addition to the jail term.
The ex-legislator was also the founder and chief of the separatist group Hynniewtrep National Liberation Council (HNLC). After surrendering to the police in 2007, Dorphang contested state assembly elections in 2013 and was elected from the Mawhati seat in the Ri-Bhoi district of Meghalaya.
Dorphang was among 12 people arrested for being involved in an illegal sex trafficking ring in the state on the basis of nine FIRs filed by the state Commission for Protection of Child Rights (CPCR). On January 4, 2017, a district court filed a non-bailable warrant against Dorphang, following which he went into hiding.
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This sparked an inter-state manhunt by the police as well as widespread outrage from women’s groups in Shillong. Dorphang, on December 15, 2016, had allegedly raped the minor girl in a guesthouse owned by the son of the then-state home minister H.D.R. Lyngdoh. Two women’s organisations in the state – Civil Society Women’s Organisation (CSWO) and Thma-U-Rangli-Juki (TUR) – took to the streets of Shillong not only demanding action against Dorphang, but also that Lyngdoh retire from the cabinet.
Dorphang was finally apprehended at a bus terminus in Guwahati, Assam and brought to a district court in Shillong where he was charged under the POCSO Act as well as the Immoral Trafficking Prevention Act. He was then put in the Nongpoh district jail where he remained until 2020, when a single-judge bench of the Meghalaya high court granted him bail on medical grounds. He has been shifted back to the district jail following his conviction, according to the Shillong Times report.
Dorphang’s legal counsel, Kishore Ch Gautam has noted that they will appeal the judgement in the Meghalaya high court.