A special POCSO court in Mathura has awarded the death penalty to a man convicted of raping and murdering an eight-year-old Dalit girl in 2020, describing the crime as falling under the category of the “rarest of rare” cases.
Special Judge (POCSO Court-II) Brajesh Kumar (II), while pronouncing the verdict on Tuesday, also imposed a fine of ₹3.20 lakh on the convict, Mahesh alias Masua. The court observed that the brutality inflicted on the child warranted nothing less than the maximum punishment.
The incident occurred on November 26, 2020, when the girl accompanied her mother to collect firewood in a forest area under Jaint police station limits. She went missing and, later, her mutilated body was discovered near a culvert in the forest. The post-mortem confirmed that the child had been raped and strangulated to death, with her neck bones broken and her eyes protruding.
Police initially registered the case under Section 363 IPC for kidnapping. As the investigation progressed, charges of rape, unnatural offences, murder, and destruction of evidence were added. Forensic evidence, including fingerprints, linked Mahesh, a resident of Tarauli-Sumali village, to the crime.
During the trial, the defence’s arguments were dismissed by the court, which found Mahesh guilty under Sections 363 (kidnapping), 376 (rape), 377 (unnatural offences), 302 (murder), and 201 (causing disappearance of evidence) of the IPC, along with provisions of the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act and the SC/ST (Prevention of Atrocities) Act.
The judgment comes nearly four-and-a-half years after the crime and marks the fourth death sentence in the district in the last three years in similar cases of rape and murder.
In addition to the death penalty, Mahesh has been ordered to serve an extra year in prison if he fails to pay the fine.
