Paridhi Arya
Published on June 4, 2022 at 15:12 IST
Special Judge H C Shende had sentenced death penalty to the man who was accused of rape and murder of an 8 year old girl, as this is not the first time earlier also the accused is sentenced for seven years in prison for assaulting a minor girl but got released in five years on the basis of good behavior.
The Judge observed that after coming out of the prison accused performed the same offence. This shows that it is impossible for him to reform. He was charged with relevant provisions of Indian Penal Code (IPC) and Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act (POCSO).
Special Public Prosecutor Vaibhav Bagade submitted in the Court that circumstances which show the manner in which crime is aggravated to sentence capital punishment.
In 2013, Devendra was convicted for sexually assaulting a minor and got released on May 9, 2018.
In the present case minor went out to buy a cup of tea from restaurant as her mother had gone through a surgery. When she didn’t come back her parents approached the police.
Police while searching for the girl reached to the shopkeeper who told the police that he saw a girl was going with Devendra. After the interrogation he took the police to the septic tank where he dumped minor’s body. He committed this crime just after 11 months of being released from the jail.
“The accused was convicted in an offence against a minor. After his release, he again committed an offence of the same kind against another minor. In this offence, he killed the victim so that she could not speak against him. Not only did he kill her, he disposed her body in such a manner that it would have probably never been found.”
“If I hear mitigating circumstances like his age and show him leniency, what if he finds another prey,” the court asked. It added that to destroy evidence, the girl was killed in a “horrible” and “spine-chilling” manner.”
“I think that if I give the accused a lesser sentence, he will again go to jail and again pretend to be good there, he will again get the rest of the sentence pardoned. This would again give him a chance to commit the same crime and ruin the life of another girl,” the Judge said in her order.
The court said that it needs to consider the plight of the parents, too, when deciding on punishment. “The accused is now remembering his aged mother but what about the mother of the victim? Because of her restricted movement after her operation, she asked the victim to buy tea from hotel by giving her Rs 10… and the innocent victim went all alone, not knowing that the accused is waiting for her and that she is going to her death,” it added.