The Larger Bench of the High Court dismissed the appeal case of the National Referral Hospital’s anaesthetic technician convicted of the rape of a married woman and official misconduct. The court affirmed the judgment passed by the High Court which has sentenced him to five years in prison. The convict was also ordered to pay Nu 22,500 to the victim as compensation. The Larger Bench dismissed the appeal as per the Civil and Criminal Procedure Code of Bhutan, this week.
The High Court convicted the 33-year-old health worker of raping a patient attendant, in 2018. According to the judgment, the convict injected the victim with Fentanyl, a pain medication drug used for surgery purposes, before raping her.
The defendant appealed to the Larger Bench claiming it was consensual sex and that the victim agreed to inject the anaesthesia. He also appealed to review the charges and reduce the sentence term.
According to the judgment, there was no proof that the two of them knew each other before the incident. It also stated that had it been consensual, there was no need for the defendant to inject anaesthesia into the victim.
Earlier in 2019, he appealed to the High Court against the judgment passed by the Thimphu District Court. The District Court sentenced him to five years in prison and also ordered him to pay a compensation of Nu 243,750 ngultrum to the victim and her husband within 10 to 90 days from the day of judgment. According to the judgment, the convict had raped the woman after injecting the anaesthetic drug in April 2018. She was attending to a patient at the National Referral Hospital in Thimphu when the incident happened.
However, the High Court reduced the compensation to Nu 22,500 (equivalent to minimum daily wage for five months) as the convict appealed to the court that he has no source of income.
Kinley Dem/Tshering Zam
