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MANGALURU: A 26-year-old labourer, who posed as a site engineer, and sexually assaulted a 22-year-old college student in Moodbidri, has been sentenced to seven years rigorous imprisonment.The sixth additional district and sessions court that passed the judgment on Saturday also directed the accused Mahesh to pay fine of Rs 10,000 finding him guilty of sexual assault. The court also sentenced him to undergo 3-years imprisonment and fined Rs 3,000 for cheating the girl.

 In addition, Mahesh has also been asked to undergo imprisonment of three months for criminal intimidation. All these sentences will run concurrently, judge D T Puttarangaswamy said directing that the fine amount be paid to the victim. According to charge sheet, the victim, then 19, studying in first year B.Com, returned a missed call from the accused seeing his mobile number in her missed call list. Mahesh introduced himself as Praveen, a site engineer and befriended her.

 Making the girl believe he was in financial trouble, he got her to offer him her gold necklace. He took her to pledge it in a branch of SBM in Moodbidri on June 3, 2013. On June 10, he took her to the bank and got the jewelry released. He then sold the necklace to a jeweler and used the amount. Later, he asked her for money stating he was short of money for a construction project. She gave him her gold earrings and gold ring, which he promised to return quickly.

 Mahesh sold these ornaments too without her knowledge. When she started calling asking him to return the ornaments, the accused on the pretext of returning the same took the victim to an abandoned branch office of a beedi firm behind a private junior college and assaulted her sexually on June 16, 2013. The accused then revealed his actual name and threatened the victim and her family of filed a case under SC/ST (Prevention of Atrocity) Act as he as a SC.

 The victim narrated the entire sequence of events to her parents about a week later and subsequently filed a complaint with jurisdictional Moodbidri police on their advice. A K Thimmaiah, then police inspector of Moodbidri police station arrested Mahesh and filed the charge sheet before the court. Judith O M Crasta, public prosecutor examined as many as 14 witnesses, including the girl and her parents, who deposed before the court about the incident.