Kochi: A special court in Kerala on Wednesday convicted and sentenced a man to double life imprisonment for the rape and murder of a 17-year-old girl in 2020. Ernakulam Special POCSO Court Judge K Soman directed that the convict Safarsha shall remain in jail for the remainder of his natural life for the offence of raping and impregnating a minor girl, public prosecutor (PP) P A Bindhu said.
The court sentenced him to life for each of the offences under section 5 (j)(ii) (of raping and impregnating a minor girl) of the POCSO Act and section 302 (murder) of the Indian Penal Code. It also sentenced him to 5 years jail term each for the offences of kidnapping the girl and destruction of evidence under the IPC and said he would serve these two punishments concurrently first and then his life imprisonment would commence, the PP said.
The court also imposed a fine of Rs 2.5 lakh on the convict and directed that the amount be given to the victim's family. The prosecutor said that the victim was four-and-half-months pregnant when she was killed. According to the prosecution, Safarsha was angry with the victim as she was ready to raise the child without his help after he left his job abroad and came here as per her request.
Therefore, he enticed her from her college and took her by road to Varattuppara in Tamil Nadu where at an isolated spot he stabbed her to death, the prosecution told the court during the trial. There were 30 injuries on the victim's body, it had told the court. The prosecution also contended that Safarsha dumped the body in a culvert near a coffee estate at Varattuppara to destroy the evidence.
The court found him guilty of raping and impregnating the girl based on the DNA evidence and post mortem report which proved she was pregnant, and he was the father, the PP said. He was found guilty of murdering her based on circumstantial evidence, the lawyer said. Safarsha, who works in an automobile service centre, was arrested in January 2020 for abducting, raping and killing the victim -- a Plus Two student -- and dumping her body in the coffee estate. The PP told reporters that only after the postmortem was the victim's pregnancy revealed.
