3-year-old’s rape-murder: HC sentences 3 to jail for rest of life

“The three appellants have been convicted for the gang rape and murder of a minor aged three years, thereby brutally mutilating her private parts and smothering her. In the present case, the death sentence has not been awarded by the learned trial court. However, the sentence of life, which would ordinarily be up to 14 years after remissions, would be highly inadequate, unjust and unfair to the victim,” said the division bench of Justice Mukta Gupta and Justice Mini Pushkarna in a verdict.

In January 2012, a case was registered at Kirti Nagar police station after the body was recovered from a drain. A post-mortem showed that the girl had been raped. Police cracked the case when a man approached it stating that he had earlier seen the girl in a market crying while being accompanied by a man, who on enquiry told him she was crying as she was lost. His statement led to the arrest of an accused, Jamahir, who later disclosed the names of co-accused Raj Kumar and Birbal. The FSL result of the evidence confirmed that the trio had committed the crime.

Rejecting the argument that the witness was planted, the court said, “Version (of witness) is further corroborated by the fact that from the vaginal and anal swabs of the deceased collected, preserved and sealed around 1 pm on January 6, 2012, the alleles matched with the DNA samples of Jamahir, as also the two other accused.”

The trial court had convicted the accused in October 2020. Though the lower court had also sentenced the convicts to imprisonment for the rest of their lives in January 2021, the division bench in its order said the Supreme Court has held that power to impose “a modified punishment providing for any specific term of incarceration or till the end of the convict’s life as an alternative to death penalty” can be exercised only by a High Court or the Supreme Court.

“The impugned order on sentence to the extent it awards sentence for the imprisonment of the remainder of the life to the appellants herein for offences punishable under Sections 376(2) and 302/34 IPC cannot be sustained,” said the bench.

However, the court said that imprisonment for the remainder of their life would be an appropriate sentence considering the facts of the case. It accordingly passed the same sentence against the convicts as given earlier by the trial court.