Indore Man Sentenced To Death For Rape And Murder Of 4-Month-Old

Indore: A 23-day trial ended in a death sentence for a man who raped and killed a four-month-old girl in Madhya Pradesh last month. The Indore session court today convicted Naveen Gadke of rape and murder of an infant and handed him a death sentence under Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act (POCSO).

Special public prosecutor Akram Sheikh had urged sessions court judge Varsha Sharma to treat the case as the "rarest of the rare" and award capital punishment to the man.

Terming it an "inhuman act", Ms Sharma said, "Such a small child who didn't know anything other than crying was treated inhumanly."

After the judgement, Naveen Gadke made a wish. "I just want to meet my mother and sister before being sent to jail." 

On April 20, the girl was sleeping with her parents, who sell balloons for a living, on the street outside the Rajwada Fort in Indore. Naveen, who was known to the family, was also lying next to them. Early in the morning, he took the infant to the vacant basement of a building, some 50 metres from where they were sleeping, and raped her. As the baby kept crying, he killed her to shut up her.

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The infant's body was spotted hours later by a shopkeeper who had gone to the basement to open his shop. Her body had injury marks on her private parts and the head. The accused probably threw her to the ground, the police had said.

The police, while looking for clues, scanned the CCTV footage of the area in which the accused was seen carrying the baby on his shoulder.

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Naveen, who is a cousin of the girls' mother, was arrested the same day. He was assaulted by angry locals when he was being taken to a court. He was again beaten up with slippers when he came out of the court.