Rajkot: A special Pocso court in Jamnagar has sentenced a 40-year-old man to death for the rape and brutal murder of his eight-year-old distant niece in 2025, categorising the crime as “rarest of the rare.”Additional district judge V P Agrawal handed the sentence of life imprisonment for rape alongside the capital punishment for murder to the convict.“The prosecution secured the conviction after examining 23 witnesses and presenting 95 pieces of documentary evidence during the trial,” said assistant public prosecutor Bharti Vadi.The convict was a distant maternal uncle of the minor victim.Vadi said the survivor’s mother had divorced her husband and moved in with the accused, who was her distant cousin and unmarried. The deceased child was the youngest of three siblings.The prosecution submitted that the girl frequently asked to visit her biological father. Her frequent demands enraged the accused, who beat her and molested her several times. Out of fear, the child would wet her clothes, which incensed the man further.On Jan 12, 2025, the girl’s mother had gone to the local market, leaving her three daughters in the house. When the eight-year-old wet her clothes, the accused flew into a rage and repeatedly smashed her head against the wall and the floor. The child was rushed to the Sikka Government Hospital, where doctors declared her dead on arrival.The mother lodged a formal complaint, leading to an FIR being registered at the Sikka police station on Jan 13, 2025.23 injury, branding marks foundMedical and forensic findings detailed severe brutality. “The postmortem examination revealed 23 injury marks on the victim’s body,” Vadi said. “She had been branded on the cheeks and her private parts with matchsticks, and had also been assaulted with a mobile phone charger. Furthermore, forensic analysis detected the accused’s semen on the child’s clothes,” she said.
