09 July 2004 :

The Bombay High Court confirmed the death sentence awarded by a lower court to Shivaji Shankar Alhalt, a 42-year-old labourer from Junnar near Pune, for the rape and murder of a 10-year-old girl. Thew date of the original sentence was not reported. The court termed Alhalt's crime as the rarest of rare crimes, a ''pre-planned'' murder ''that did not permit the court to impose a lesser punishment''. It was alleged that under the pretext of providing fuel wood, Alhalt tricked the young student from the neighbourhood to follow him to a nearby hill, where he brutally raped before strangulating her. The accused was found a day later by the police hiding in the nearby sugarcane fields.