Man gets life in jail for rape, murder of 5-year-old girl

Ghaziabad: A special POSCO court on Friday sentenced a 36-year-old man to life imprisonment for the rape and murder of a five-year-old girl in Khoda nearly three year’s ago.
Special judge (POCSO) Harshvardhan also imposed a fine of Rs 1.60 lakh on the convict, Deepak Singh, of which Rs 1.25 lakh would be given to the girl’s family as a compensation amount.
According to special public prosecutor Utkarsh Vats, a missing’s person complaint was registered against an unidentified person at the Khoda police station on August 3, 2018, a day after the girl went missing.
Singh, who ran a tax attached to a cab aggregator, was then living as a tenant in the girl's house.
After his arrest on August 7, police told the media that on the evening of July 2, Singh was watching porn in an inebriated state in his room when the girl walked in around 8 pm. He raped the girl and later smothered her to death when she tried to raise an alarm.
“Singh kept the girl’s body in a bag near the house’s stairs and later put it on the roof of the adjacent house belonging to her uncle. Next day, he also participated in a search operation launched by her parents to trace her,” Vats said.
The body of the girl was found two days later, on the morning of July 4, while the post-mortem was conducted the same night.
The forensics team collected some important evidence in the case.
The nature of injuries on her nose and lips and other circumstantial evidence hinted at sexual assault on her. On that basis, IPC Section 376 AB (rape of a girl under 12 years of age) and other relevant sections of the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act was subsequently added. A total of seven witnesses were examined in the case.