17-yr-old awarded 20 years' jail for rape and murder of minor

A Hisar court Wednesday sentenced a 17-year-old to 20 years of imprisonment for raping and killing a six-year-old girl of Uklana town in Haryana's Hisar district last year.

The boy was awarded the sentence in connection with the abduction, rape, and murder of the minor girl on the night of December 8, 2017.

Additional District and Sessions Judge, Hisar, D R Chalia, who pronounced the verdict, also slapped a fine of Rs 80,000 on the convict and in case of default, he would have to undergo further imprisonment of two years.

The teenager was earlier being tried as a juvenile, but the case was later shifted to district and sessions court. The Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Act, 2015, was amended to allow 16-18-year-olds to be tried as adults for heinous crimes such as rape and murder.

Till he turns 21, the convict will be lodged at a home for juvenile offenders in Sonipat. After that, he will be shifted to a regular jail.

"The court awarded 20 years of imprisonment each under section 376 (rape), 302 (murder), the SC/ST Act, the POCSO Act, and seven years' imprisonment each under section 363 (kidnapping), section 450 (house trespass in order to commission of an offence)," Pradeep Saini, advocate for the accused said, adding that all the sentences will run concurrently.

The brutalised body of the girl was found in a deserted street near the telephone exchange building in Uklana in the morning of December 9 last year.

Sexual assault by the assailant and later treating her in a brutal manner had resulted in her death, the doctors who conducted the postmortem examination of the victim, had then said.

The girl had been abducted from inside a hut where she was sleeping with her mother. The father of the girl was away in Gurugram that night.

The doctors of Hisar civil hospital, who conducted the postmortem, had disclosed in their report that the assailant inserted a wooden stick into the private part of the girl, thus rupturing her intestines.

The sexual assault and the brutal manner in which her intestines were ruptured had caused her death. Scratch marks were also found on the body of the girl.

The girl's family members, who originally belong to Tohana town in Haryana's Fatehabad district, had been living and working as labourers in Uklana for some years.

A case under relevant sections was registered in Uklana Police Station on December 9, 2017.

A special investigation team (SIT) was constituted headed by the then SP Hisar, Manisha Choudhary, for investigation into this case along with two DSPs as members.

"It was first-of-its kind case in which Haryana Police had got narco analysis test, polygraph and brain mapping test of the accused done from Forensic Sciences Laboratory, Gandhinagar in Gujarat," a spokesman for the state police department said in Chandigarh.