Express News Service
CHENNAI: A division bench of the Madras High Court has confirmed the capital punishment imposed by a lower court on Daswanth (23), who had raped a seven-year-old child and murdered her.
"This court is conceivably satisfied that any sentence other than death would not be commensurate with the gravity of the offence committed and therefore, the case of the accused squarely falls under the category of 'rarest of rare cases' and definitely demands the sentence of death and accordingly finds no reason to deviate from the sentence awarded by the trial court and accordingly confirms the sentence of death," the bench of Justices S Vimala and S Ramathilagam has said.
In their 92 pages judgment delivered on Tuesday, the judges hoped that the death sentence would be the last second at the long end of the rope for the deceased and the same would be the last second for the lust of potential offenders of the whole world towards womenfolk.
The bench was dismissing a criminal appeal from Daswanth to set aside the conviction and sentence passed by the Sessions Judge, Mahila Court in Chengalpattu on February 19 this year. According to prosecution, the accused, then a student in a deemed university, abducted the seven-year-old child when she was playing near her house in Mugalivakkam at about 6 p.m. on February 5, 2017.
He took her to his flat and raped and killed her. Later, he burnt the body by pouring petrol at a secluded place, to erase the evidence and escape from the clutches of law. The clueless police took the clue furnished by the frantic father of the girl, nearly after 40 hours, browsed the video footage of the CCTV camera in a nearby temple and the repeated viewing enabled them to find the involvement of Daswanth in the crime, which ultimately led to finding out the few parts of the burnt body of the girl on February 8.
The bench pointed out that parting with a daughter even at the joyful time of her marriage is very difficult for the parents. Even a joyful occasion gives pain to the heart of the parents, who have to part with their daughter, who was nourished and cherished by them.
That being the case, parting with their child by way of death, that too in a very gruesome and barbaric manner, as in the case on hand, the pain that the hearts of the parents would suffer is beyond the comprehension of this Court to express in words.
Words are not adequate in any language to express the agony and pain that the parents would suffer in seeing their child being done to death in such an inhumane manner. No amount of sympathy can relieve the pain that the two souls would have gone through since the day they came to know about the eternal loss of their beloved daughter. In such a backdrop, the non-identification of the dead body by the parents cannot in any way jeopardize the case of the prosecution," the judges added.
This court, though swayed by the demands for abolition of capital punishment from the pages of penology, is still conscious of the larger social interest and attendant implications of letting out the criminals involved in child sexual abuse and left with the hopson's choice of sticking to the capital punishment as the appropriate punishment for the accused, the bench said. On the basis of the evidence produced, the bench said that it is of the view that the prosecution has proved the case against the accused beyond all reasonable doubts and confirmed the trial court order.
