Indore rape & murder: 51-pg report relied on 29 witnesses

INDORE: A local court on Saturday handed over death sentence to a man for raping and killing a three-month-old girl near Rajwada in Indore. Conviction in the crime that shook the city came in a record 22 days— one of the fastest police investigation and trials in Madhya Pradesh.The court termed the offence rarest of rare crimes.As the sessions court pronounced him guilty and pronounced the judgement, the accused stood shocked and fumbled for words.On the intervening night of April 19 and April 20, the infant who was sleeping with her parents was picked up by the accused, a distant relative.The accused took her to a secluded building ‘Srinath Palace’ where he brutally raped her and smothered her as she began wailing. Medical and forensic reports found that he had later thrown the survivor off into the basement of the building and went to his residence in Gadrakhedi.“The Supreme Court had also ruled in a case of forceful and brutal rape and murder of a nine-year-old that such an offence is a crime against the society and considered death penalty fit for such a criminal,” the order read. The death sentence will be executed after it is confirmed by the high court.The 51-page judgment by the fifth additional district and sessions judge Varsha Sharma relied on the 29 witnesses examined by the prosecution, and the DNA report received from the forensic laboratory confirming presence of the accused’s DNA on the victim’s body and her clothes. When the accused was brought before the court and declared guilty, he was asked by the judge if he wanted to say anything. Dressed in the same clothes as he had been wearing since the day he was arrested, the convict said he had not done anything to any child and was innocent.The judge said that she had already pronounced him guilty and asked him what punishment did he think should be given to him. Stammering, the accused stood joining his hands and asked the court to give him whatever punishment they thought was fit. “I only want to meet my mother and sister for the last time before being sent to jail,” the accused said.Terror-striken, the accused was brought out of the courtroom by heavily armed police, who waded through and angry and abusive crowd to take him back to jail.