india

Updated: Dec 29, 2018 00:14 IST

A special court trying MPs and MLAs on Friday sentenced a former DMK MLA and his associate to 10 years rigorous imprisonment for raping and murdering a 15-year-old girl in 2012.

The court also has imposed Rs 30000 penalty on the former lawmaker, M Rajkumar, and Rs.12000 on his associate Jai Shankar.

Judge J Shanthi, in her verdict on the six-year-old case, found Rajkumar guilty under sections 376 (rape), 304 (culpable homicide) and 120 (criminal conspiracy) of the Indian Penal Code.

On July 13, 2012, police from Kerala’s Idukki had arrested Rajkumar, a former legislator from Perambalur, his driver Mahendran and his associate Jai Shankar in connection with the suspicious death of a 15-year-old girl, who was a maid at Rajkumar’s house in Perambalur.

The prosecution argued was that the girl’s poverty-stricken parents, residents of Idukki, had sold her for Rs 5,000 to the DMK leader through a middleman. However, a few days later, the girl had called her parents and pleaded with them to be taken back home.

A few days after, the girl died at the Government Hospital in Theni on July 6, 2012. While Rajkumar claimed that that she had a fever, her father, on finding injuries on her body, suspected foul play and lodged a complaint with the Idukki police.

During the autopsy, it was confirmed that the girl was raped and murdered. Following this, Rajkumar and his two associates were arrested. As per the request of the girl’s father, the case was later transferred to Tamil Nadu police’s Crime Branch, Crime Investigation Department.

The agency, which carried out the investigation, had charged Rajkumar and Jai Shankar with rape, kidnapping and murder.