Rajasthan: POCSO court awards death sentence to accused for raping, killing minor

The accused then took the victim near a well in his farm and raped her. Then he strangled her with her own sweater but seeing that she was still breathing the accused hit her on the head with a stick following which she died. The accused then hid her body amid the wheat crop in her field.

Pali (Rajasthan): A POCSO court in Rajasthan's Pali has awarded death sentence to a man for raping and murdering a 10-year-old girl. The verdict was given by Special Judge Surendra Kumar of POCSO Court No. 3 in the district on Saturday.

The court convicted the accused of murder, rape, kidnapping, destruction of evidence and under the POCSO Act. It also imposed a fine of Rs. 1.30 lakh on the accused. However, the accused Narpat Singh Jodha's father Manohar Singh Rajput was acquitted of the charge of helping him flee from the spot.

Assistant Public Prosecutor Upendra Sharma, Senior Advocate Kamlesh Devera and Bhagirath Singh Rajpurohit Rupawas appeared on behalf of the victim in the case. Senior advocate Kamlesh Davera told the court that the police had presented the challan in the court after completing the investigation in this case in just 15 days.

Davera said that the chargesheet mentions that on January 24, 2022, accused Narpat Singh Jodha(22) had taken the victim and two other children of her age on the pretext of eating plum to his farm located at some distance from the victim's house. He then drove away both the children who came with the victim.

The accused then took the victim near a well in his farm and raped her. Then he strangled her with her own sweater but seeing that she was still breathing the accused hit her on the head with a stick following which she died. The accused then hid her body amid the wheat crop in her field.

Later, when the girl's grandfather and her mother reached the spot and saw blood on the clothes of the accused, they confronted him and tried to catch him. But the accused then assaulted the victim's grandfather. When the father of the accused reached the spot, he was also told about the incident. The accused then fled from the spot.

He reached the field where he had hidden the victim's body and dumped it into a well, half a kilometre away. The body was recovered by the police on January 25. Advocate Davera told the court that the accused brutally murdered the girl after raping her. Special Judge Surendra Kumar then awarded the death sentence to the accused.