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Two of the three accused in the gang rape of Anjana Mishra, the estranged wife of an Indian Forest Service officer, have been sentenced to life imprisonment.
Session Judge (Khurda) Mahendranath Patnaik delivered the verdict on Monday afternoon.
Anjana Mishra told mediapersons that the verdict has strengthened her faith in the judicial system.
Anjana Mishra (34), mother of two children, was brutally raped by three men at Barang on the outskirts of Bhubaneswar on January nine, 1999, when she was on her way to Cuttack with a journalist friend to meet her lawyer.
The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), which probed the incident, had chargesheeted Padia Sahu and Tunia Mohanty in the case. However, another accused Biban Biswal is absconding.
Mishra has been in the limelight since 1997 when she lodged a complaint against her husband Subash Mishra at a Cuttack police station.
She had alleged that Subhash Mishra had forced her into a mental asylum for nine months to continue an illicit affair with his sister-in-law and to pressurise her family members for more dowry.
In 1998, she was once again in the news after accusing the then state advocate general Indrajit Ray of attempting to molest her when she had gone to apprise him of the case she had filed against her husband.
Ray was eventually forced to resign following a hue and cry by various social and women's groups.
PTI adds Anjana Mishra has expressed her disappointment over the failure of the CBI to arrest the third accused.
"I feel disappointed and demoralized," Anjana told reporters in Bhubaneswar.
She pointed out that the three persons were mere pawns in a bigger conspiracy.
"It was more important for me to find the conspirators," she said.
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