india

Updated: Jun 28, 2019 01:13 IST

For the first time in the country, a court here on Thursday sentenced a 19-year-old man to rigorous life imprisonment for sexually assaulting a minor boy and murdering him two years ago as a juvenile, officials familiar with the matter said.

Additional metropolitan sessions judge Suneetha Kunchala found “the child in conflict with the law” and guilty of the charges. The culprit was 17-years-old at the t of the crime.

The Telangana police, in a press release, said it is the first time in the country that an accused, who was a juvenile at the time of the crime, has been sentenced to life imprisonment for the offences of “unnatural sex and murder”.

Additional public prosecutor K Pratap Reddy said the court sentenced the man to 10 years rigorous imprisonment each under Indian Penal Code (IPC ) Sections 364 (kidnap in order to murder), 377 (unnatural offences), 201 (causing disappearance of evidence of offence), 302 (murder) and relevant sections of the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (Pocso Act.

According to the prosecution, the accused had on June 28, 2017, taken the 11-year-old victim to the terrace of a school building on the pretext of playing with him. The culprit sexually abused the boy before killing him by hitting him on the head with an iron pipe. As per the Juvenile Justice Act, a child in conflict with law is a child who is alleged or found to have committed an offence and who has not completed 18 years of age on the day of the commission of such offence.