3 Narnaul youths get death for gang rape, murder of 9-yr-old

Ravinder Saini

Tribune News Service

Narnaul, January 19

The court of Additional Sessions Judge RK Dogra today awarded death penalty to three persons for the abduction, gang rape and murder of a minor girl in Ateli town here over two-and-half years ago. The court, however, acquitted the fourth accused by giving him the benefit of doubt for want of evidence. It also slapped a penalty on the culprits ranging from Rs 2,000 to Rs 5,000 under various sections of the IPC.

Sources said the naked body of the nine-year-old victim, who had gone missing under mysterious circumstances a day ago, was found in bushes near the Ateli railway station on November 1, 2014. Her post-mortem examination had revealed that she was strangled after being gang-raped and subjected to unnatural sex. The victim was a student of Class IV.

Later, infuriated residents of over 10 villages had, on November 3, 2014, blocked all entry and exit points of the town on the Rewari-Narnaul road for over seven hours to protest the gang-rape and killing of the minor girl.

The police then arrested four persons, identified as Arun (30), Rajesh (24), Deepak (24), all from Ateli, and Sanjay Choudhary of Bihar. Rajesh ran a dhaba and Arun was a depot holder while Sanjay was employed at the Ateli railway station.

Sources maintained that during interrogation, the accused disclosed that Arun lured the girl to his plot near the railway station when she was going alone to release a rat trapped in a mousetrap. He then called other accomplices, who first consumed liquor and then gang-raped the girl. They strangled her after committing the crime and dumped the body in bushes near the railway station before fleeing.

Advocate Karan Singh Yadav, who fought the case free of cost to ensure justice to the victim’s family, informed that the court had pronounced capital punishment to the convicts, Arun, Rajesh and Deepak, under Section 302 (murder) and 10 years jail under Sections 376 G (gang rape), 377 (unnatural sexual offence) and 363/366 (abduction) of the IPC. The court acquitted Sanjay Choudhary for want of evidence.

Yadav maintained that the victim’s father, a tailor by profession, also died due to illness some days after his daughter’s murder.