UP: Uttarakhand man gets death sentence for raping eight-year-old Dalit girl

Lucknow— Pocso court in Badaun district  of Uttar Pradesh awarded death sentence to a man accused of raping a Dalit girl. The court termed the rape and murder of an eight- year-old Dalit girl in 2021 as ‘rarest of rare’ case. The court also imposed a fine of Rs 2 lakh on the accused named Gufran Ahmad, a resident of Udham Singh Nagar in Uttarakhand who was working in the fields.

The Judge Deepak Yadav handed out capital punishment to the accused and drew references to “Delhi Nirbhaya Case” to draw parallels between the two cases.

Water-tight circumstantial evidence nails the Rapist

On April 11, 2021, the parents of the victim were harvesting a field as agricultural labourer when their daughter was raped and murdered 400 metres away. The accused tried to smother the girl to stop her from screaming but the people who were working in the fields heard her cry and the accused was caught red-handed and beaten by the people.

Although the DNA of the accused could not match with the victim but there was sufficient circumstantial evidence and eye witnesses against the accused. Speaking to The Mooknayak Amol Johri the special public prosecutor in the case said “His arrest was onthespot and his vest was found at the site of the crime. In the post-mortem conducted by the team injuries were found in the vagina of the victim.”

The FIR was lodged under IPC sections 363 (abduction) 376 AB (rape of a girl less than 12 years of age), 302 (murder) along with Pocso and SC/ST Acts.

Attempts to prove the accused “mentally ill” didn’t stand scrutiny

Amol Jauhari, said ”The defence tried to prove that the convict was mentally ill at the time of the incident could not stand the scrutiny of the court. When he was examined by two panel doctors at the Bareilly Mental Hospital they told that he was having the habit of irrelevant talk and talking to self and this is also symptomatic of people who have committed a crime and are depressed. Which was not sufficient to prove that he could not have committed the crime.”

Jauhri added that “SC/ST act was dropped in the case as it was proved that the accused was not aware of the caste/religion of the victim. But he was found guilty under rape, murder and Pocso Act.”