A special POCSO court in Jalpaiguri district of West Bengal on Thursday sentenced three people, convicted in a rape and murder case of a minor that took place about five years ago, to death by hanging.
The convicts, Rahaman Ali, Jamirul and Tamirul, were accused of abducting the victim and repeatedly raping her over days before strangulating her to death near the banks of Charai river and dumping her body in an under-construction septic tank in the neighbourhood to destroy evidence.
The sentence was passed after Judge Rintu Sur convicted the three accused as guilty on Wednesday, following the examination of 27 witnesses in the court.
The crime came to light in the Rajgunj police station area in the north Bengal district of Jalpaiguri in August, 2020 after the family of the 16-year-old girl, a class 10 student at a local madrasa, lodged a missing person complaint.
The victim's body was later recovered in a partially decomposed state from a septic tank near the house of one of the accused where she was dumped.
The court, while passing the death sentences, observed that the crime fell under the 'rarest of the rare' category.
According to the police, all three convicts, aged around 30-35, lived in neighbouring villages. The trio, police said, confessed to kidnapping the victim from near her house on August 10, 2020 and taking her to separate locations, including local hotels, where they sexually assaulted her.
She was later strangulated to death and her body dumped in the septic tank.
"The verdict, where all three accused were convicted and sentenced to death, is unprecedented in the history of Jalpaiguri district," Debashish Dutta, government pleader in court, told reporters.
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