We have a responsibility to set good values and guidance for posterity, the judge said (Representational)
A court in Panchkula, Haryana, on Friday awarded life term, but not for the remainder of his life, to a teenage convict in the rape and murder case of a five-year-old girl.
The court on January 18 convicted the boy, who will be turning 18 later this year, for raping and brutally killing the girl in broad daylight in a vacant land behind an 8-foot wall near a private school in Sector 14 Panchkula in May 2019.
The "child in conflict with law" (as such convicts are referred to under Juvenile Justice Act), who was her neighbour, had killed the girl after smashing her head with a brick.
The incident had come to light after the parents searched for the girl and found her body in the empty plot.
On Friday, Additional Sessions Judge Narender Sura awarded the punishment to the convict.
In his judgment, the judge observed that the convict took the girl under the pretext of ''Kanjak Poojan'' and committed gruesome offences with "highest viciousness".
He committed the offences in a brutal manner, which has shocked the collective conscience of the community. "In such cases, sympathy in any form would be misplaced and it would shake the confidence of public in the administration of criminal justice system," the judge observed.
"We live in a civilized society where law and order is supreme and citizens enjoy inviolable fundamental human rights, but when these type of offences are committed, it causes ripples in the conscience of the society and serious doubts are raised as to whether we are really living in a civilized society".
Certainly, whenever such grave violations of human dignity come to fore, an unknown sense of insecurity and helplessness grabs entire society, particularly in women, and the only succour people look for, is the ''State'' to take command of the situation and remedy it effectively, he said.
"We have a responsibility to set good values and guidance for posterity."
The child in conflict with law was convicted for the commission of the offences punishable under Sections 302 and 376-A IPC and Section 6 of the POCSO Act.
The convict's age is above 17 years, as per his own statement made before the court.