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A special court in Bhopal on Tuesday sentenced a 30-year-old man to 'triple death sentence', convicting him under three charges for the brutal rape and murder of a minor girl last year, stating that the accused was "extremely cruel and bestial" and deserved a greater punishment than death penalty.
The case falls in the category of rarest of rare cases, the court said, adding that considering the demonic nature of the accused, if appropriate punishment was not given to him, then it cannot even be imagined how big a threat it will pose to the values of the society and personal life.
Special court judge Kumudini Patel, hearing cases pertaining to the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act, also sentenced the mother and sister of the male accused, Atul Nihale, to two-year jail term in connection with the case.
The court handed triple death sentence to Nihale, convicting him for abduction, rape and murder of five-year-old girl.
The five-year-old girl from Shahjahanabad area of Bhopal was raped and murdered in September 2024, prosecution's public relation officer Manoj Tripathi said in a statement.
This is for the first time that a person was awarded a triple death sentence in the state, he said.
As per the case details, the minor girl had gone missing after she left the flat of her uncle in Shahjahanabad on September 24, 2024. When the girl did not return home, her grandmother started looking for her. But after failing to find her, her family members approached the police.
The police used technical surveillance, roped in a dog squad, he said.
During the search, the police detected foul smell coming from the flat of accused Nihale. When police got the door opened, the accused's mother Basanti Bai and sister Chanchal told the cops that the bad odour was due to dead rats and they had just cleaned the floor with phenyl.
When the police continued to search, the two women started shouting and stopped them from doing so. However, women police personnel took them aside and the search continued.
During the operation, the police found that the smell was emanating from a white plastic water tank. On looking into the tank, the cops saw the legs of the victims.
Since the body was not coming out due to its small lid, the police took the entire tank to AIIMS, Bhopal, where doctors confirmed that she was brutally raped and her private part was badly injured, he said.
After the interrogation of the trio, the police recovered the victim's clothes and the knife used in the crime.
Nihale admitted the crime and told police that his mother and sister helped in hiding the crime.
The DNA test also confirmed that the girl was raped by Nihale, Tripathi said.
Defence lawyers presented a doctor's prescription of 2015, terming him mentally sick and failed to carry out the treatment of the same. However, the court got the examination by a panel of doctors and found the convict as mentally healthy, he added.
While awarding capital punishment to Nihale, the court said in the order that the demonic nature of the accused, the way of committing the crime, under which he brutalised the girl with a knife and when she resisted, he attacked her on other body parts and killed her, he said.
The court said that without getting disturbed in any way after violence, rape and murder of the innocent girl, he tried to dispose of the body in a planned manner, he added.
The court said that if appropriate punishment is not given to the accused, then it cannot even be imagined how big a threat it will pose to the values of the society and personal life. Looking at the nature of the crime committed by him, it cannot be imagined at all that there is any scope for any improvement in the accused. The accused is extremely cruel, ruthless, gruesome, sadistic and bestial by nature, it said.
The aggravated circumstances are more than the mitigating circumstances and it is clear that this case falls in the category of rarest of rare cases where the question of any other punishment undoubtedly ends, it said.
The judge stated that if there is any case for which the death penalty should be awarded, then it is this case, according to the prosecution's PRO.
If we cannot provide such a society to children where they can play in their own courtyard, home, school, then how can a civilized society be imagined, the court said.
The court said that while social security is a fundamental element of the Indian Constitution, does releasing such a man -vampire monster come under human rights? If there is a greater punishment than the death penalty, then the accused deserves it, it said.
Nihale was charged under various Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS) sections, including 64 (A) (rape), 66 (causing death or resulting in persistent vegetative state of victim) and 103 (murder) as well as the POCSO Act.
Nihale's mother Basanti Bai and sister Chanchal were also convicted under BNS section 238 (A) (causing disappearance of evidence of offence, or giving false information to screen offender) and awarded a jail term of two year each.