Zulfiqar Khan gets 14-year jail in two sodomy cases

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, January 9

Acting on an application of his counsel, a local court today ordered 14 years jail to Theatre Age director Zulfiqar Khan in three sodomy cases.

Additional District and Sessions judge JS Sidhu had earlier given seven years jail term in three separate cases. Zulfiqar’s advocate AS Sukhija had then moved an application that the three sentences should run concurrently as per law.

Following this, the court today pronounced that since maximum punishment for the offence was14 years, so in two cases he would get total 14 years jail while the sentence of seven years in the third case would run concurrently.        

The court on December 23 sentenced him to seven years rigorous imprisonment under Sections 377 (unnatural sex) and one year rigorous imprisonment under Section 293 (Whoever sells, lets to hire, distributes, exhibits or circulates obscene objects to any young person) of the IPC in three cases each with total Rs 31,000 fine. 

Five separate cases of sodomy were registered against Zulfiqar. He was convicted in three of them while was acquitted in other two as in the latter cases the victims had turned hostile in court.

Zulfiqar was arrested last year from his school in Sector 25, where he used to teach the underprivileged children, based on the complaint by two boys that their teacher forced them to have unnatural sex. After the complaint, the police received more complaints with similar allegations. The police had also seized sedatives and CDs of porn movies from his school.