Two men who had been found guilty of gangrape and murder of a 5-year-old girl by the Calcutta High Court have had their death penalty converted to a life sentence of 60 years without any remission chance. A division bench of Justice Debangsu Basak and Justice Md Shabbar Rashidi passed the judgment that affirmed the conviction of Fagun Mandi and Rabindra Routh, awarded previously by the Jhargram sessions court.
Both of the convicts were proven guilty on the basis of several violations, such as gangrape, aggravated penetrative sexual assault, murder, kidnapping, abduction of a minor, and destruction of evidence. The trial court had already categorised the crime as the rarest of the rare, thus sentencing them to the death penalty.
In maintaining their conviction, the Calcutta High Court reviewed the sentence on the basis of the socio-economic background of the convicts as well as the prospect that they could be rehabilitated. It said that a report filed by the state government on June 9 had made positive references to the possibilities of rehabilitating the two men. Putting these into consideration, the court found that the term of life imprisonment without remission for a period of 60 years was a befitting punishment.
The defence stated during the hearing that the case could not pass the criteria of the so-called rarest of rare category and cited so-called gaps in the evidence provided by the prosecution, with a lack of support for some testimonies, among other things. The prosecution, though, argued that the charges were proved beyond a reasonable doubt.
The sad event took place in November 2021, when the father of the victim filed the complaint, identifying that his daughter was missing. Her body later turned up in an agricultural field, and investigations revealed that she had been raped through aggravated sexual assault, after which she was murdered. The verdict made by the High Court amends the punishment, but it does not exclude the serious nature of the crime.
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