INDIA: UP MAN GETS DEATH PENALTY FOR RAPE, MURDER OF 8-YEAR-OLD DALIT GIRL

September 4, 2025:

A special SC/ST court in Mathura (Uttar Pradesh) on September 2, 2025 awarded the death penalty to a 50-year-old man for abducting, raping and murdering an eight-year-old Dalit girl in 2020, calling it a "rarest of rare case for its brutality".
The autopsy report revealed multiple sharp injuries to the victim's private parts, with severe damage to her uterus and internal bleeding in her kidneys and liver, which led to her death. Additional district govt counsel Subhash Chaturvedi said, "The doctor, Sonu Chaturvedi, who conducted the autopsy, also found injuries on the rectum and neck, deep bite marks on her shoulder and scratches on several parts of her body. She possibly died due to acute blood loss, as the convict, after assaulting her, strangled and left her to die in the forest at night."
On Nov 26, 2020, the Class II student was abducted while collecting firewood with a woman from her village in Mathura district. Her father filed a missing person complaint when she didn't return home that evening. Police later found her body in a forested area of Vrindavan, where she had been strangled with her own clothes.
The accused, a local villager, was arrested two days later on Nov 28. An FIR was registered under IPC sections 363 (kidnapping), 376 (rape), 377 (intercourse against the order of nature), 302 (murder) and 201 (destruction of evidence), along with sections of the Pocso Act (Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act) and SC/ST Act (The Scheduled Castes and The Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act).
A chargesheet was filed on Jan 25, 2021, and the trial began the following month.
During the trial, police presented testimonies of nine individuals, scientific evidence and autopsy findings. Investigators found the convict's skin tissues in the victim's nails, and a woman from the village testified that the man was a habitual offender who often misbehaved with girls.
Chaturvedi said the court of additional sessions judge Brijesh Kumar rejected the convict's plea for leniency, which claimed it was his first offence. Considering the savagery of the act, the court held him guilty and ruled that "the convict be hanged by neck till death". It also imposed a fine of Rs 3,20,000 on the convict.