SC stays death warrant against teacher convicted for raping 4-year-old girl

The Supreme Court on Friday stayed the execution of death penalty against a school teacher, who was convicted for raping a four-year-old girl in Satna district of Madhya Pradesh in June last year.

A bench comprising Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi and justices L Nageswara Rao and Sanjiv Khanna stayed the execution of the death sentence of convict Mahendra Singh Gond, which was scheduled for March 2 in a Jabalpur jail.

"There shall be stay of execution of the death sentence of the petitioner," the bench said.

According to the prosecution, the girl was so brutally assaulted that she had to spend months in the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), Delhi to get her intestines realigned.

After raping her, the convict had dumped her in a jungle, thinking she was dead, and her family members had found her in the wee hours when she was barely alive, the prosecution had said.

The Madhya Pradesh High Court had, on January 25, confirmed the death sentence awarded to the convict by the trial court.

The trial court had convicted Gond on September 19, 2018 and awarded him death penalty under the recently-introduced section 376(a)(b) (raping a minor under 12 years of age) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC).

Thereafter, the convict had approached the Supreme Court against the high court order.

Section 376(a)(b) of the IPC provides for death penalty for rapists of girls below 12 years of age. The provision was inserted into the IPC last year through the Criminal Law Amendment Act, 2018.