On Tuesday, a POCSO court in Mumbai sentenced a 24-year-old transgender person to death for kidnapping, raping, and murdering a three-month-old girl in Cuffe Parade in 2021.
This is considered a ‘rarest of rare cases’. Special judge, of the Prevention of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) court, Aditee Kadam, said, “Life sentence is a rule, and death sentence is an exception, only to be awarded in the rarest of rare cases. This crime smacks of the degradation of a girl child, depravity, and perversity. The barbaric and inhuman manner in which the offense was committed has made it the ‘rarest of rare cases’.”
“The accused had planned to commit the crime and executed it meticulously,” the judge said, calling it a “cold-blooded murder.
‘The accused approached the family of the girl for a gift after the girl child was born, as is customary of some members of the transgender community. However, the family declined to give anything. The accused then developed a grudge against the family. Later, the accused kidnapped the infant when her family members were asleep, raped her, and drowned her in the nearby creek. He was abetted by a co-accused. The judge acquitted the co-accused of all charges. The child’s body was found the next morning in an area near a creek near their house based on information supplied by the accused.
A witness stated in his testimony that he found the child when he went fishing at Sassoon Dock at around 2 am.
“The accused had come to the house around 8 pm asking for bakshish (gift) in the form of a 9-yard saree, coconut, and ₹1,100 on the birth of a girl child. We did not give him anything. While leaving, he threatened us that he would do something in five-six days which would make him famous,” the girl’s mother, who complained, said in her testimony.
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