Man sentenced to death for rape, murder

A sessions court in Mumbai on Monday convicted and sentenced a man to death sentence for kidnapping, raping and killing a four-year-old girl and trying to destroy the evidence by disposing off her body. The court also convicted another man, the owner of the property where the first convict used to work for aiding and abetting the crime.

The prosecution’s case is that on January 1, 2012 the four-year-old victim had gone to play outside her house in Saki Naka at about 12.30 pm but she had gone missing and so her father lodged a missing complaint with Saki Naka police station. The next day the complainant received a phone call from the police informing him that body of a young girl was found at Vile Parle and he was asked to identify the body at Cooper Hospital. When the complainant reached the hospital, he realised that the body was of his daughter.

On January 3, the complainant learnt from his neighbourhood that some unusual incidents had taken place at a godown near his house where advertising boards were manufactured. Apparently, the dead body of a minor girl was found there and Nazir Khan, an employee there, had taken the body away for disposal. Since, his daughter too was missing, the complainant grew suspicious and approached the police against Khan. Following this, Khan was arrested but the complainant was not satisfied with how the case was handled and in fact, the post-mortem report also did not state his daughter’s cause of death.

He then approached the Bombay high court, which directed the assistant commissioner of police of that area to investigate the matter and another autopsy was conducted by another doctor. The report stated that the victim was sexually assaulted before being killed and pronounced strangulation as the cause of death. The police then arrested Khan for rape and murder and the godown’s owner Vinod Meher for aiding and abetting the crime.

Khan’s lawyer had claimed his client has been falsely implicated in the case and there is no evidence against him. While defence lawyer Vijay Desai argued Meher did not even visit the godown where the crime had taken place. He claimed the accused had called him and informed about body of a girl lying in the godown but at that time Vinod was going to Delhi and had hence asked his sister to inform the police. The court, however, observed that the prosecution with the help of circumstantial and medical evidence proved their case beyond reasonable doubt against Khan and he was convicted and awarded death sentence. But the prosecution could not prove involvement of Meher in the crime but he was convicted and sentenced to three years for destroying the evidence by helping the accused in disposing off the body.