Mumbai, December 20
The Bombay High Court on Thursday confirmed death penalty awarded to a 30-year-old man for the rape and murder of a woman techie, saying the maximum punishment was appropriate in the case, considering “increasing incidents of crime against women” in India.
Chandrabhan Sanap was pronounced guilty by a special court in 2015 and awarded the death sentence for the rape and murder of the 23-year-old software professional who was employed with a leading IT firm in Mumbai.
A Bench of justices Ranjit More and Bharati Dangre said while the 2012 (Delhi) gang rape case—where the victim was a paramedical student—brought in a criminal amendment to make rape laws stricter, incidents such as the Shakti Mills rape case here and countless other cases of sexual assault continued to take place across the nation.
“The increasing incidents (of crime against women) have led to the entire womenfolk in the country questioning their safety. They expect the legislature and the judiciary to restore their faith in the system,” the Bench said. The judges described the convict as a “menace to society” and said rising crime against women should be tackled on all fronts.
“The victim was done to death by the accused for no fault of her own, except for a reason that she is a woman and she fell prey to the sinister design of the accused to fulfil his lust. The said attitude of the accused, according to us, deserves a death sentence,” the Bench said. — PTI