Vadodara: A 53-year-old driving instructor was sentenced to a year in jail for kissing a college girl while she was learning to drive a car from him. The court also fined the accused, Dharmendra Shah , Rs 30,000 after convicting him under IPC section 354 for sexual harassment . The court, in its recent order, observed that if people commit crimes believing that evidence wouldn't be available and even if convicted, they would apologize to the court, which will let them off, then it won't be in the state's interest.
"If the accused is taken lightly by the court, then it would disappoint the prosecuting agencies. Also, what about the victim as she felt pain and was shocked due to the act of the accused," the court observed while sentencing Shah to one year's jail. The girl, who was 18 years old at the time of the incident, had filed a complaint against Shah at Karelibaug police station in Jan last year.
She told the police that she was learning to drive from Shah. In Nov 2022, when she was alighting from the car after her session near Amitnagar Society in Karelibaug, Shah kissed her on the cheek. He repeated the act in Dec 2022 after taking the car, during one of her learning sessions, to an isolated spot near Karelibaug and tried to molest her.
She told the police that she didn't inform her family about it initially as she was scared. After the first incident, she took her mother the next day for the driving session and another relative the day after. But when she went alone fo.