Rape-murder convict gets 2 death penalties

BHOPAL: A 28-year-old man accused of raping and killing a 4-year-old girl in Indore, 188 kilometers south west of Bhopal, was awarded double death penalty by a trial court on Monday, said the prosecution lawyer.

The court pronounced the judgment within three months of the crime. District prosecution officer Mohd Akram Sheikh said, “The court of special sessions judge (POCSO) Varsha Sharma awarded death penalty to Ankit Vijayvargiya under section 376-A (rape) and another death penalty under section 302 of IPC. He was sentenced to life under the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act.”

The accused is married and has one-and-a-half-month-old daughter. He cited his family to seek a lenient sentence but the court observed that the crime fell under the rarest of rare category.

The four-year-old victim was asleep along with her parents under a tree near a Sai temple at Mhow in Indore district on December 1, 2019.

Her parents beg for a living and have no permanent home. The next morning, they couldn’t find the child whose body was later found among the ruins of a building, with telltale injuries indicative of a sexual assault. On their complaint, an SIT was constituted to arrest the accused who was identified through CCTV footage.

Sheikh said, “CCTV footage showed him running away, carrying the girl in his arms. One of his earrings was recovered from the crime scene. The DNA report also corroborated the prosecution’s charges.”