Jamshedpur, Dec. 21: A Ghatshila subdivision court today found four youths guilty of gangrape of an American citizen of Indian origin in 2003.

The court fixed Saturday, December 24, for declaring the sentence. Lawyers of the accused, however, declared their intention to appeal against the order. ?We shall move to a higher court after obtaining a copy of the verdict,? Anirban Sarkar, the defence counsel, said.

The public prosecutor, Dalu Mandal, who was in charge of the case, informed that the court of additional and session judge A.K. Dutta has found the four teenagers guilty after the case stretched for nearly a year and a half.

?We had to go a long way in collecting witnesses and evidences and substantiating the case to prove that the four teenagers were indeed guilty,? he added.

The rape of the NRI woman had caused a sensation as the lady, a social activist, had not only complained to the police, identified the culprits and subjected herself to medical examination, but she also wrote a first personal account of her ordeal in this newspaper.

She also returned from the US to depose in the case and get examined by the defence lawyers.

The prosecution, the court held, had successfully proved that the four teenagers had used a boat to cross the river and accost the solitary lady on August 16, 2003, who sat on a rock alone, beside the Subernarekha, after viewing the sunset.

The teenagers overpowered and assaulted the woman in a nearby field before using the same boat to return to the other bank and flee the spot.

While they were arrested a few days later, they were identified by the victim in no uncertain terms.

The culprits, identified as Bipin Dhiwar, Kudal Dhiwar, Sukdev Dhiwar and Vijay Dhiwar, are all in their teens and are from Amainagar hamlet under Musaboni police station in Ghatshila.

The prosecution altogether examined 15 witnesses, including the staff of the hotel she stayed in, the doctor of the MGM hospital, who examined the victim and the operator of the telephone booth she used to contact her family and friends in Calcutta after the incident.

According to legal experts, the minimum punishment in a gangrape case extends to 10 years of rigorous imprisonment. But they hastened to add that there are instances when people accused of gangrape have also been awarded sentences for life.

This rape of the young lady, however, had caused a sensation and raised a question mark on the security of tourists in the area.

The Ghatshila police, however, sought to undo some of the infamy and swung into action immediately a day after the unsavoury incident and detained a few youths in and around the site of the gangrape.