Special Court orders first capital sentence in a POCSO case in state

Amitava Banerjee | MP | 20 November 2019 |Darjeeling: A special Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Court in Darjeeling sentenced a man to hang to death for raping and murdering his own minor sister.

This is the first instance of capital punishment in a POCSO case in Bengal.

"The convict shall be hanged by the neck till his death," ordered Rupanjana Chakrabarti, Special Judge, POCSO Court, Darjeeling on Wednesday.

The convict, 39-year-old Sudhama Sharma was charged under Sections 364, 376, 377 (rape and sodomy) and 302 (murder) of the Indian Penal Code read with Section 6 of POCSO Act, 2012.

"This is a landmark judgment and the first of its kind in a POCSO case in Bengal," stated Pranay Rai, Public Prosecutor (PP), Darjeeling.

The victim, an 11-year-old girl, used to regularly visit a temple in her village located in the plains of the Darjeeling district on the Indo-Nepal border.

On the morning of 11 November, 2014, her father could not find her there. He went around asking the temple priest, who said that he had not seen her in the temple on that day.

A search was subsequently launched for the missing child. When they approached a nearby forest, they saw Sudhama (the brother of the victim) walking out of the forest. Sudhama is a rickshaw-puller by profession and his rickshaw was seen standing near the forest.

When asked if he had seen his sister, Sudhama claimed that she was having lunch in the house of the rickshaw owner. On inquiry at the house of the rickshaw owner, they were told that the girl had not visited the house.

A neighbour later stated that he had seen the girl playing with other children in the front porch of her house in the morning and that Sudhama had taken her away.

The local residents got

suspicious and caught hold of Sudhama. He was roughed up and later handed over to the police. The next morning the body of the girl was found hanging from a tree in the forest.

"A post-mortem was conducted and the report stated that the victim had been raped and then strangled to death.

A chargesheet was submitted on 31 July 2015, while the charges were framed on 23 March 2016. 20 witnesses were examined in the case," added the PP. >