A special court in the Tumakuru district of Karnataka sentenced an Islamic cleric, who was teaching in a Madrasa, to 11 years in prison and a fine of Rs 30,000, after being found guilty of sodomising and threatening a 13-year-old minor boy.

The special court judge N Krishnaiah ordered the district legal services authority to pay Rs 5 lakh to the boy as compensation. 

Mufti Musharaf, a native of Uttar Pradesh, was teaching at a madrassa near Amalapur in Tumakuru, Karnataka, in 2015 when he sodomized one of his students. The incident was only uncovered two days later when the victim’s mother visited him at the Madarsa.

When the mother found out what had happened to her kid, she was embarrassed, and the boy cried when he saw his mother. She filed a complaint against Mufti Musharaf with Karnataka police after her son told her about his suffering.

Following the complaint, the police filed a case against the Maulana under Indian Penal Code sections 377 (unnatural sex) and 506 (criminal intimidation) and arrested him. Both the accused and the victim were then taken to the hospital for medical tests, which revealed that the youngster had been sodomized.

According to special public prosecutor GV Gayathri, the Islamic teacher received harsh punishment because not only the boy, but eleven other eyewitnesses testified against the Madarsa teacher during his trial, but the statements of the minor boy and his mother were extremely crucial for the prosecution in proving the Musharaf’s guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.

Public prosecutor GV Gayathri said that Mufti Musharaf asked the minor boy to help him book a train ticket to his native place in Uttar Pradesh and took him to the railway station as he was not conversant with the local language- Kannada.

Musharaf fabricated a scenario in which he told the boy that his motorcycle had run out of petrol and that they would have to spend the night in a nearby hotel because the boy, who believed his teacher, was unaware of what was going to happen.

The special prosecutor was quoted by TOI as saying, “In the hotel’s register, he [Musharaf] had mentioned his name as well as that of the boy. After committing the crime, Musharaf took the boy on his bike the next morning and dropped him back at the madrassa. He returned to the lodge and vacated the room. The hotel ledger mentioned there were two persons; a man and a boy while entering the room, and only the man was present while vacating it.”

Click here to subscribe to The Commune on Telegram and get the best stories of the day delivered to you personally.