Panipat court sentences two men to death for rape, murder murdering a 12-year-old girl

Tribune News Service

Mukesh Tandon
Panipat, February 18

A local court sentenced two people to death for the 2018 rape and murder of a 12-year-old girl in Panipat’s Urlana village in Madlauda.

This is the first time Panipat’s court has handed down capital punishment.

Pradeep and Sagar, alias Kallu, are both from Urlana village. The case was reported on January 4, 2018, when the naked body of the child was found near a pond in the village.

Both the victim and the suspects were Dalits.    

The court said in its judgment that such “inhuman” assault upon the child affected society’s “moral fiber”.

“The convicts not only gang-raped the victim of such tender age but also murdered her by strangulating her neck using her shawl just with a view to screen themselves from punishment. The diabolical nature of the offence that shocks the collective conscience of the society and humanity is revealed from the fact that the convicts, having murdered the victim, again committed rape upon the dead body of the victim,”  

Additional Sessions Judge Sumit Garg said in his order. “Any lesser sentence would do grave injustice not only to the victim and her family but to the society as well.”

The victim, a student of Class 6, lived with her maternal grandparents. Her uncle said she went to throw out the trash on the evening of January 4, 2018, and never returned. The family filed a missing person’s report when they couldn’t find her.

Police detained the two suspects from the vicinity the same day. Their detention lead to the recovery of the victim’s clothes, police said.

The suspects admitted to having raped and strangled the child, police said.

They also admitted to having continued with their sexual assault after the child had died and then threw her into the pond, police said.

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