The three-page Mara-thi statement, by a Mumbai teenage girl to the police, vividly tells a grim story of what happened inside a police chowkey on India’s best-known seaside promenade less than a year ago, on April 21.

The girl had pleaded often, as she sat alone and afraid on a bench inside the Marine Drive police chowkey, watching constable Sunil Atmaram More (33) swig what she said was alcohol, out of a water bottle.

Her friend was away, the dada had sent him off to fetch Rs 5,000.

That day less than a year ago, More had staggered out of the chowkey, adjusted his trousers, and abused an outraged crowd that had heard the girl’s screams.

I’m a cop, you can’t touch me, More had sneered.

But this April 3, in an unusually swift trial that’s now a landmark in India’s slow record of convictions in rape cases, a Mumbai sessions court convicted More to 12 years’ rigorous imprisonment for rape of the minor girl, wrongful confinement and criminal intimidation inside the chowkey. The clincher was the victim’s testimony.

“We have concluded the trial in just five months,” says Special Public Prosecutor Ujjwal Nikam. “I examined the victim on October 3. We closed evidence in March. On April 3, the conviction was announced”.

The in-camera trial could go down as the swiftest conviction in rape cases outside a fast-track court, though it was the Bombay High Court that had set the sessions court an April 30 deadline to wrap up the trial.

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