india

Updated: Jul 18, 2019 01:05 IST

A Pocso court in Kerala on Wednesday awarded a triple life term, plus 26 years of rigorous imprisonment, to a 27-year-old man who raped and strangled to death his seven-year-old niece in Kollam in the southern part of the state in September2017.

Delivering the judgement, additional sessions judge E Baiju, who is in charge of the Pocso (Protection of Children from Sexual Offences) court in Kollam, said Rajesh – he uses only one name – had been spared the death penalty because of his age.

Rajesh will, however, have to serve the three jail terms separately, the court said. He will also have to pay a fine of Rs 3.20 lakh to the girl’s family members, many of whom were present in the court.

He was convicted on Monday for various offences, including murder, rape, unnatural sex, abduction and showing disrespect to a dead body.

According to the prosecution, the girl’s grandmother was taking her to school on September 27, 2017, when they met Rajesh. When he offered to drop her to school, the grandmother handed her over and returned to their home in Anchal in Kollam.

But, instead of heading to school, Rajesh took the girl to a rubber plantation in Kulathupuzha about 16km away in his auto-rickshaw, where he raped and strangulated her and dumped her body in a forest, the prosecution said. The body was recovered two days later.

When the girl did not return home that afternoon, her mother filed a missing complaint and contacted the school authorities. Rajesh led a protest against the school, saying she had gone missing from there. But the authorities insisted she had not shown up in school that day.

When the police began investigations, they chanced upon closed-circuit television footage from a house in the area that showed the girl with Rajesh. He was subsequently arrested from a forest in Kulathupuzha, where he was hiding. On repeated questioning by the police, Rajesh confessed to violating and killing the girl, and led them to the spot where he had abandoned her body.

Though the prosecution had sought the death penalty for him, the judge observed that considering his age he could be spared. The case had triggered outrage in the state two years ago.

(WITH AGENCY INPUTS)

.