‘Exceptionally cruel, cold-blooded’: Jalgaon court awards death penalty to man for raping minor tribal girl, killing her and her 3 siblings

The family had moved to the village from Madhya Pradesh around 2012 and had been staying on and cultivating their landlord’s banana and sorghum farm. The father of the minors was employed with the landlord and was staying on the farmhouse with his family members.

The prosecution claimed that the victims’ parents and their elder son had gone to their native place in Madhya Pradesh to attend the last rites of their relatives and had requested the informant/complainant landlord to look after their children.

On the morning of October 15, 2020, the informant visited his agricultural field and called the children to see if they had woken up; however, none responded. He then went near their house and pushed the door, where he found the minor children killed. He also noticed an iron axe stained with blood on the ground, and, being frightened, he rushed to the police and reported the matter.

The probing team found the accused was a friend of one of the minor victims and was seen with him on the day of the incident.

The police found that the accused had gone to stay at the victims’ residence during the night, raped the 13-year-old girl, and killed her and the other siblings with an iron axe.

The then Special Public Prosecutor Ujjwal Nikam, who is now a BJP Rajya Sabha MP, had argued that, considering the facts and circumstances weighed with social and judicial conscience, it had to be termed a rarest-of-the-rare case.

The court observed that the accused did not suffer from any severe mental or emotional disturbance and instead executed the crime “in a calculated manner with precision” and “brutally killed them all without showing any mercy.”

The judge found that there was every possibility the accused “would create a continuing threat to society” and “make life miserable” for the witnesses in the case, including his father and uncle, who are “least bothered to protect his interest and supported the truth”; therefore, their lives “cannot be put in peril” by showing the accused unnecessary sympathy.

The court also found “no scope for reformation and rehabilitation of the accused and his reintegration into society.”

“The accused is guilty of the reprehensible and nefarious offence. Any leniency to the accused for his barbaric and dastardly act will have devastating effects on society,” the judge observed and granted him a double death penalty for rape and murder, which is to be executed subject to confirmation by the High Court.

The court also recommended that the District Legal Services Authority (DLSA) provide suitable compensation to the father, who lost his four children, under the Victim Compensation Scheme, as he “must have suffered much mental agony and emotional pain as a result of the crime.”