Palghar court awards death penalty to man for raping, killing nine-year-old girl
A court in Maharashtra’s Palghar district has sentenced a 51-year-old man to death for the rape and murder of a nine-year-old girl in Dahanu taluka in 2021, describing the crime as one of extreme brutality that shocked both the judiciary and society, reported the PTI.
Additional Sessions Judge A.R. Rahane also imposed a fine of Rs 75,000 on the convict, Pramul alias Praffula alias Pramod Ratna Ghoshe, a local grocer.
According to the prosecution, the incident took place on September 27, 2021, in Ranshet Vangadpada village in Dahanu.
The Class IV student had been sent by her mother to buy groceries when Ghoshe allegedly lured her to his house with a Rs 10 coin. He then sexually assaulted the child, according to the PTI.
When the girl managed to escape and cried out that she would tell her father, the accused allegedly chased her with a sickle and repeatedly attacked her near a water tank.
Eyewitness attacked
A motorcyclist had attempted to rescue the girl after witnessing the attack.
The convict allegedly assaulted him with the sickle, injuring his neck and back before fleeing. The eyewitness survived and later became a key witness in the case, as per the PTI.
The child died from multiple injuries, including a deep wound to her neck that severed her spinal cord.
The court examined 24 prosecution witnesses in the case.
It held that the prosecution had proved the case beyond reasonable doubt, relying on the direct evidence of the injured eyewitness, forensic findings and the recovery of the murder weapon.
DNA profiling conducted by the Forensic Science Laboratory matched samples collected from the victim with the accused, while the sickle used in the attack was later recovered from bushes behind a closed shop.
Court calls crime ‘extremely brutal’
The court observed that the accused deliberately targeted the child, describing his actions as a “sinister design” carried out to satisfy his sexual desires.
It noted that the victim suffered repeated sexual assault before being brutally murdered and said the crime represented an exceptional level of cruelty, the news agency reported.
The judge remarked that the child, who should have been enjoying a carefree childhood, instead dealt with animal passion by an acquaintance of her father’s age.
Cold-blooded murder
The judge highlighted that the accused committed a cold-blooded murder without any provocation, noting that while the victim’s fragile frame would have collapsed from a single blow, the accused continued to literally chop her, causing as many as 20 injuries across various body parts, as per the PTI.
“The extreme brutality and heinous nature of the crime shocked not only the judicial conscience but also that of the entire society, as such barbaric treatment of an innocent, helpless child assumes proportions of extreme depravity and revulsion in the mind of any stranger,” it said, the news agency reported.
(with PTI inputs)
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