Two awarded death, two others lifer in POCSO cases

Mumbai: The sessions court in Thane district on Friday awarded death penalties to two persons in two separate cases of sexual offences against minors registered under the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act. The court also sentenced two more persons to life imprisonment in different cases under POCSO.

In the first case, the court sentenced Ramkirit Goud, a resident of Thane, to death for kidnapping, raping and killing a three-year-old girl in Thane. The prosecution case is that the Kasarvadavli police registered a missing complaint on September 30, 2013 after the victim went missing while playing outside her house. Later, her body was found in a pit filled with water and the police went on to arrest Goud on October 3, 2013.

Mohammed Abed Sheikh (20) was the second person to get capital punishment after the prosecution proved that he kidnapped, raped and killed a four-year-old girl living in Bhiwandi. The Bhoiwada police had registered the case on April 1, 2018, when a four-year-old girl went missing from near her house. Her body was found in a severely decomposed condition in an open field close to her house on April 4. The probe led to the arrest of Sheikh, a loom worker staying in the same locality.

Meanwhile, the court sentenced Hafeez Pathan, a resident of Mumbra, to life imprisonment and imposed a fine of `26,000 on him for sexually assa-ulting and killing an eight year-old boy in December 2018. According to the Mumbra police, Pathan lured the victim into the forest area in Mumbra and sexually assaulted him before strangulating him to death.

The Thane court awarded life sentence to Suman Jha too for sexually assaulting a minor girl in March 2018. Jha was arrested within 24 hours of registering the case.