A city Pocso court on Tuesday awarded death penalty to a 34-year-old man for kidnapping and sexually assaulting a seven-month-old baby girl who lived with her parents on a footpath in north Calcutta. The child is still in hospital in a critical condition, police said.

The Pocso (protection of children from sexual offences) court at Bichar Bhawan in Calcutta declared the crime as “rarest of rare” and ordered the death sentence for Rajib Ghosh who was convicted on Monday.

“The court has considered this as a rarest of rare crime and awarded the convict death sentence. There was an argument by the defence lawyers that how could we demand the death sentence as the victim was still alive. But I had submitted a prayer mentioning a clause of the Pocso act where the punishment is death and nowhere it is mentioned that the victim has to be dead. We also mentioned that the child, who is struggling for her life, will have to endure this mental trauma for the rest of her life even if she manages to recover physically. The court accepted the prayer and awarded the death sentence,” said prosecution lawyer Bivas Chatterjee.

Deputy commissioner (north division) of Kolkata Police, Dipak Sarkar, said police went through several thousand hours of CCTV footage to identify Ghosh and arrest him. The police have used the gait pattern analysis, in which the walking pattern of the suspect as recorded in CCTV footage was matched with that of the man after his arrest, he said.

“The bite mark found on the face of the baby matched with the teeth impression of the man,” said another officer of Burtolla police station attached to the probe.

Investigators said Ghosh was identified by four witnesses in a test identification parade, his DNA profile was matched with the semen found on the baby’s apparel and blood on the man’s clothes was matched with that of the baby, the police said.

“We also did a Google mapping of his phone, which confirmed his presence at the crime scene when the offence was committed,” said an officer.

The crime was reported in November last year when the baby girl went missing from a footpath. She was found a few hours later, abandoned and badly injured, not far from her parents.

Her medical examination had revealed grievous injuries and serious sexual assault on her private parts prompting the police to immediately start a case against unknown persons.

The death sentence came within 78 days of the date of the crime.