Minor’s rape-murder: Supreme Court upholds death penalty

A bench of Justices A M Khanwilkar, Dinesh Maheshwari and C T Ravikumar said, “The crime had been of extreme depravity, which shocks the conscience, particularly looking to the target (a seven-year-old mentally and physically challenged girl) and then, looking to the manner of committing murder, where the hapless victim’s head was literally smashed, resulting in multiple injuries including fracture of frontal bone.”

“This is apart from the facts that the innocent victim was kidnapped on a stolen motorcycle by misusing the trust gained by offer of confectionery items and also, apart from the fact that she was brutally and inhumanly raped,” it said.

The court said the convict, Manoj Pratap Singh, “has a family with wife and minor daughter and aged father and the crime was committed when he was only 28 years of age”.

“However, these mitigating factors are pitted against several other factors pertaining to the appellant himself. One, being of his activities and actions before the present crime where he was found involved in at least four cases [under provisions relating to causing damage to public property, theft and attempt to murder]. Second, being the fact that the present crime itself was carried out with the aid of a stolen motorcycle. Third, and crucial one being his conduct post-conviction where he not only earned 7 days’ punishment in jail for quarreling with a co-inmate but he has been convicted of the offence of murder of another jail inmate,” the bench said.

It said that “read as a whole, the fact-sheet concerning the appellant leads only the logical deduction that there is no possibility that he would not relapse again in this crime if given any indulgence… there appears no probability of his reformation and rehabilitation”.

Upholding the death penalty, the judgment said: “Hence, the facts of the present case, taken as a whole, make it clear that it is unlikely that the appellant, if given an absolution, would not be capable of and would not be inclined to commit such a crime again. Consequently, we find it to be a case of no other option but to confirm the death sentence awarded to the appellant, for that being inevitable in this particular case.”
According to the prosecution, Singh kidnapped the child in front of her parents from their vending cart in Rajasamand district in Rajasthan on January 17, 2013, raped her and killed her.

The trial court awarded him the death sentence, which was then confirmed by the Rajasthan High Court in May 2015.