SC confirms death sentence for rape & murder of child

New Delhi (PTI): The Supreme Court has awarded death sentence to a man who raped a five-year-old girl and caused her death.
"The case at hand falls in the rarest of rare category. The depraved acts of the accused calls for only sentence that is death sentence," a bench of Justices Arijit Pasayat and Mukundakam Sharma observed while, dismissing the appeal filed by the rapist-cum-murderer Bantu.
Bantu had appealed in the apex court against the death sentence imposed by a sessions judge, Agra, which was affirmed by the Allahabad High Court.
"The punishment to be awarded for a crime must not be irrelevant but it should conform to and be consistent with the atrocity and brutality with which the crime has been perpetrated, the enormity of the crime warranting public abhorrence," the bench observed while confirming the death sentence.
As per the prosecution's case, on the fateful date of October 4, 2003, Bantu lured the unsuspecting girl, daughter of his neighbour, to a pond on the pretext of buying her balloons and raped her.
After committing the offence, in an apparent bid to destroy evidence, Bantu inserted a 57-cm-long piece of wood into her private part.
Two villagers on hearing the victim's cries for help rushed to site and caught hold of Bantu in a naked condition. The girl was taken to the hospital where she was pronounced dead.
Thursday, July 24, 2008
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