Madras HC confirms death sentence to man convicted of raping 7-year-old girl

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The Madurai Bench of the Madras High Court on Wednesday confirmed the orders of a lower court awarding death sentence to a 26-year-old man, who allegedly raped a seven-year-old Dalit girl and killed her to hide the crime.

In all fairness, the judgment of the trial court fulfilled all the touchstones to determine that it is one of the rarest of rare cases for imposition of death sentence, as imposition of any other punishment much less life imprisonment is completely insufficient and inadequate and would not meet the ends of justice, the court said.

"Taking into consideration the brutality of attack, the barbaric manner in which the deceased child was murdered and the mental agony undergone by the parents, we find that except death sentence, no other sentence will be adequate. We have examined this case more carefully and having given our anxious thought to the facts, we have found that the mitigating circumstances in favour of the accused herein is no match to the aggravating circumstances," a division bench of Justices S Vaidyanathan and G Jayachandran said and confirmed the death sentence awarded by the Pudukottai Mahila court.

Samivel alias Rajah had in June 2020 taken the victim girl to a local temple in Embal village in Pudukottai district on June 30, 2020 and then to an isolated place and committed the offence of aggravated sexual assult upon her. Later, fearing that the deceased child would reveal the offence to others, he dashed her head against a tree and also pierced the face and neck of the deceased child and threw the body into a dried pond and covered it with leaves and shrubs to screen the evidence.

By an order passed in October, 2021, the local court in Pudukottai imposed death sentence on him. Challenging this, the accused preferred the criminal appeal. The prosecution had also preferred a petition to get the lower court order confirmed.

Dismissing the criminal appeal and allowing the prosecution petition, the judges observed they were bit hesitant initially to take away the life of a person by way of a judicial order and thought of converting the punishment into one of life imprisonment.

"But, after due deliberation and contemplation, we were reminded of the preaching of Lord Krishna to Arjuna in the battlefield that everyone is going to disappear from the world, even if he (Arjuna) does not shoot the enemies with arrows, even though they are relatives/known persons. Further saying, when a particular duty is given to a person, he has to discharge the same without fear or favour.," the bench said.

Besides, the judges also quoted a couplet from Tirukkural to gather strength to confirm the life sentence.

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