Fast track court judge Suvarnalata Srivastav is expected to pronounce the judgment in the infamous Patan gangrape case, on Friday.

An 18-year-old Dalit girl, the daughter of a daily labourer from Jelalvasna village of Mehsana district, was repeatedly gangraped by her six teachers at the Patan DIET PTC College between September ‘07 and January ‘08.

The accused are Manish Parmar, Mahendra Prajapati, Ashwin Parmar, Kiran Patel, Suresh Patel and Atul Patel. They face serious charges of gangrape, sexual assault, criminal conspiracy, unnatural offence and possession of pornographic material. Four of the accused also face charges under the provisions of the Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe (Prevention of Atrocity) Act.

The government had appointed Nayana Bhatt as the Special Prosecutor in the case, while the accused had employed a battery of defence advocates.

The prosecution has also examined 25 of the total 78 witnesses in the case. The prosecution case has been mainly built on the statements given by the complainant and other girls studying in the PTC college.

The accused have taken defence by saying that the entire case is false and has been propagated at the behest of the then college principal Bhartiben Patel. The accused have also said that the FIR in the case has been lodged very late after the alleged duration of the offence. To this, the prosecution has contended that the girl lodged the complaint late because she was under pressure from the accused, who had threatened her with poor internal scores, which constitute 45 per cent of the total marks for the annual examination.

Nayana Bhatt said: “We have tried to satisfactorily put forth our case before the court. Now, it has to be seen what the court decides.”

Initially, Patan district police had investigated the case. Later, the investigation was handed over to CID (Crime).