JAIPUR: A special court here on Thursday awarded death penalty to a 25-year-old man for the rape and murder of a four-year girl in August last year under
Narena police station
area in Jaipur (Rural).
Special court judge Sandeep Kumar Sharma also imposed a fine of Rs 2 lakh on Suresh Kumar Balai. “Prosecution produced atotal of 41 witnesses in the case. None of them turned hostile,” said special public prosecutor Mahaveer Singh Kishnawat.
Police said the parents had on August 12 informed that their daughter had gone missing. Cops fished out her body from a pond the same day and the accused was arrested 15 hours later even as the post-mortem report confirmed the rape.
Balai was booked under Sections 366 (kidnapping), 302 (murder), 201 (Causing disappearance of evidence), 376AB (Person committing an offence of rape on a woman under twelve years of age) of IPC along with relevant sections of the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act.
Then SP Jaipur (Rural) Shankar Dutt Sharma had constituted a special investigation team (SIT) which included nearly 700 cops. The SIT was led by additional SP (headquarters) Dharmendra Kumar Yadav. “I am happy that our efforts led to the accused’s conviction. We all had worked round-the-clock because of the gravity of the offence. We had also roped in a special public prosecutor to expedite the case,” Sharma said.
According to Yadav, the case was “blind” from the beginning because there was no clue or trail to identify the accused behind the grisly crime. “As soon as we had received information of a minor girl going missing, we rushed to the spot. All resources were marshalled to Narena in Dudu,” Yadav said. “Police also had to control the law and order situation. We had a team of 700 cops who combed every nook and cranny of the village to find the accused. We apprehended the accused in 15 hours,” Yadav told TOI.
The SIT held regular meetings with the prosecutor to begin a day-to-day trial in the case. “We had filed a comprehensive chargesheet within eight working days in the case,” Yadav said, adding that the SIT camped at the spot to pacify the protestors and also to investigate the matter.
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