Top Court Reconfirms Death Penalty For Coimbatore Rape-And-Murder Convict

The top court said that the convict has committed a "grave offence to the society".

A man convicted of "horribly" gang-raping a 10-year-old girl before murdering her along with her little brother in Tamil Nadu's Coimbatore in 2010 does not deserve mercy, the Supreme Court said today, dismissing his petition against the death sentence.

In a majority judgment of 2:1, a bench headed by Justice RF Nariman said there are no grounds to review convict Manoharan's death penalty as he has committed a "grave offence to the society".

While Justices Nariman and Suryakant dismissed the review plea, Justice Sanjiv Khanna, who was also part of the three-judge bench, stuck to his earlier view favouring a life term.

"In view of the majority judgment, the review petition stands dismissed in its entirety," the bench said.

The Supreme Court had last month stayed Manoharan's execution after his request to review the death penalty.

Manoharan was found guilty of gang-raping the girl along with a co-accused, and later killing her and her seven-year-old brother by throwing them into a canal with their hands tied.

Terming the crime as "shocking" and "cold-blooded", the Supreme Court upheld the death penalty verdicts of the trial court and the Madras High Court saying the offence was in the "rarest of rare" category.

Manoharan and co-accused Mohanakrishnan, who was later shot dead in an encounter, had picked up the child and her brother from outside a temple on October 29, 2010, on their way to school.

The men tied the hands of both siblings and brutally gang-raped the girl before trying to kill them by poisoning. When the children did not die, the men tied their hands and threw them to Parambikulam-Axhiyar Project canal where they drowned.

With inputs from agencies