A fast track court at Palwal sentenced a 23-year-old man to rigorous life imprisonment for raping and murdering a minor girl in 2019.
The court clarified that the life imprisonment granted to the convict, Vinod, shall be without any remission and he shall undergo rigorous imprisonment till his last breath. The court also granted a sum of тВ╣25 lakhs to the parents of the victim as final compensation as per the Victim Compensation Scheme, 2020.
The special Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act court, in its February 1 sentencing order, said since the convict committed murder of the victim in an extremely brutal and barbaric manner, by putting her on the railway track, after strangulating her to unconsciousness. She was brutally crushed and expired within a few seconds. She was deprived of the most precious possession of life, without any reason, the court said.
тАЬConsidering the circumstances of the present case and striking a balance between the retributive, reformative and deterrent purposes of sentencing, the ends of justice would be met, only if extreme punishment of rigorous imprisonment for the remainder of his natural life is granted to the convict so that no person dares to repeat an offence, in which a child victim was kidnapped on the pretext of marriage, repeatedly raped and then brutally murdered,тАЩтАЩ said additional sessions judge (ASJ) Prashant Rana in the sentencing order. The court said since the present case does not fall in the category of the rarest of rare, a death sentence is not warranted.
тАШVictim was pressurizing accused to marry herтАЩ
The court in its January 30 conviction orders said the intention of the accused was to get rid of the victim since she was pressurizing him to marry her while the accused had got engaged for an arranged marriage. The court said this has been mentioned by the accused in his disclosure statement, duly corroborated by evidence. Even otherwise, where a criminal act has been proved to have been committed by an offender, the motive in his mind pales into insignificance, the court said. The special court thus convicted the accused for the commission of offences punishable under Sections 376-A, 302 and 201 of the Indian Penal Code (IPC), and Section 6 of the POCSO Act.
The court in its orders said the ocular testimony of the witnesses, medical evidence, the testimony of police officers, scientific evidence of call details records, forensic evidence, DNA report and recoveries effected from the accused, unequivocally point towards the guilt of the accused.
тАЬIt is proved beyond any reasonable doubt that on June 1 and 2, 2019, at around midnight, the victim was enticed by the accused on the scene of occurrence near the railway track of Agwanpur village. He raped her, strangulated and murdered her, by putting her on the railway track after she fell unconscious. He also tried to destroy the evidence of his crime by putting the body of the deceased on the railway track so that it gets crushed and the evidence disappears. Also, he sent a false text message to the victimтАЩs family and falsely named co-accused Rinku,тАЩтАЩ the court said.
The court said the name of the village of the convict has not been mentioned in the judgment to maintain the anonymity of the victim since they belonged to the same village. The name of the village of the convict is mentioned in the warrants of imprisonment.
