The Delhi high court on Tuesday directed Jamia Millia Islamia to re-admit three law students, who have been acquitted in a case of kidnapping and gangraping a minor girl in the national capital.
Justice V K Jain also asked the university to allow Pulkit Chaudhary, Amandeep Kadian and Sharad Shekhar Tomar, who were asked to discontinue their studies on the allegations, to sit for their exams missed during the pendency of the trial.
"The applicants (Pulkit Chaudhary, Amandeep Kadian and Sharad Shekhar Tomar) should be allowed to seat for their exams. The college should also re-admit them as they have been acquitted in the case lodged against them," the court said.
Its direction came on a petition filed by the three law students, who also sought direction for writing the exams which they missed during the trial.
The students had approached the high court after the trial court in August had acquitted them of charges of wrongful confinement, abduction, gangrape and cheating by personation and common intention under the IPC.
They have also been acquitted of charges under various sections of the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act.
The police had last year arrested five law students after a complaint was lodged at the Defence Colony Police Station on September 15 by the girl's parents. However, the court had acquitted all of them.
The girl's parents had told the police that their daughter, a Class XI student, had not returned home after attending school on September 15.
The five law students were charged with gangraping the girl, who was allegedly held in captivity at the South Delhi residence of one of the co-accused.
The court, however, acquitted the accused relying on the testimony of the prosecution witnesses in the case who failed to identify the five as the culprits.
Initially, a case of kidnapping was registered by police but when the girl was recovered on November 27 last year, she deposed that she had a quarrel with her parents, so she had accompanied her friend Amit to his flat.
