The Madhya Pradesh High Court on Friday pronounced death sentence to a schoolteacher in a case of raping a four-year-old girl in Satna district.
Confirming the death penalty of the convict, Mahendra Singh Gond, a division bench of justices P K Jaiswal and Anjuli Palo said the court should impose a punishment befitting the crime.
Gond, a schoolteacher, was convicted and sentenced to death by a trial court in Satna district in September last year, government advocate Brahmadatt Singh said.
The convict had appealed against the trial court judgment in the high court.
The bench observed, "In the present scenario, where such crimes are continuously increasing, reformative ideas are totally ineffective.
"Justice demands that the court should impose a punishment befitting the crime so that it reflects the public abhorrence of the crime."
It further said, "It could not be conceived from a person, who is performing the pious duty of a teacher, who is expected to nurture the character and morality in the children of the nation, to commit such kind of a heinous act which is tantamount to moral turpitude."
The trial court had sentenced Gond to death under the recently-introduced section 376(a)(b) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC).
The convict was also found guilty under IPC section 363 (kidnapping), for which he was sentenced to seven years of rigorous imprisonment, besides being fined Rs 5,000, Singh said.
The incident had occurred on July 1, 2018 in Parasmaniya village when the convict had gone to meet the father of the girl, he added.
Finding the girl sleeping alone in the courtyard of her house at night, he had taken her to a nearby field and raped her, the government advocate said.
The girl was found in an unconscious state by her parents near the field the next morning, the counsel said.
Subsequently, the father of the girl had lodged an FIR with the local police and Gond was arrested, he added.
(PTI)
