Man gets life imprisonment for 4-year-old girl's rape, murder in Panipat

(Amit Kumar)
KARNAL: A fast track court (POCSO), of additional sessions judge Sukhpreet Singh on Friday awarded rigorous imprisonment for life to a man for raping and murdering a 4-year-old girl in 2017.
The court also imposed a fine of Rs 1.10 lakh on the convict identified as Sukhraj alias Mannu of Kaushambi district in Uttar Pradesh.
The court held him guilty under sections 353, 366, 376A, 376 (2), 302, and 201 of the IPC and POCSO Act.
As per the police investigation, on January 18, 2017, the girl went missing under mysterious circumstances and her body was recovered on January 22, (four days after) from a well in the field near Arya Nagar of Panipat.
Later, the postmortem report confirmed that the victim was murdered after rape.
The girl's family is a native of Uttar Pradesh and has lived in a locality of Panipat for the last several years.
(The victim's identity has not been revealed to protect her privacy as per Supreme court directives on cases related to sexual assault)