Ghaziabad: A city court on Saturday sentenced a 30-year-old man to life imprisonment for the rape and murder of a five-year-old girl in Muradnagar in April 2019.
The court, headed by special judge (Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act) Neeraj Gautam, also imposed a penalty of ₹1.3 lakh on the accused.
“Convict Mahajan is punished with life imprisonment under Section 302 of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) and also a penalty of ₹50,000… Of the total penalty of ₹1.3 lakh, ₹1 lakh will be given to the parents of the girl,” the court said in its order on Saturday.
The prosecution argued the case on the basis of CCTV footage, the witness who saw the accused taking the girl away, and the medical reports which confirmed the assault.
Special public prosecutor (Pocso) Utkarsh Vats said: “The accused lured the girl away and subjected her to unnatural offense, rape, and later strangled her to death. He dumped the body in sugarcane fields in order to hide the crime.”
The case dates back to April 7, 2019, when the five-year-old was playing outside her house and went missing. The next day, local residents found her body in a sugarcane field just outside the locality and police were informed.
An FIR was registered under IPC sections 302 (murder) and 201 (destruction of evidence) at Muradnagar police station the same day. Later, sections 377 (unnatural offences), 376a (rape that causes the death of the woman or leaves her in a persistent vegetative state) of the IPC as well as provisions of the Pocso Act were added.
Police arrested Mahajan on April 9, 2019, from the Rawli Road area in Muradnagar.