Three youths get death sentence in murder-cum-gang rape case

New Delhi: Three young men were on Wednesday awarded death penalty for kidnapping, gang raping and killing a 19-year-old girl with a Delhi court saying that the convicts showed extreme sense of brutality and depravity 'forfeiting their right to live'.

The court said their offence fell under 'rarest of the rare' category and life imprisonment would be 'highly inadequate' as they are 'menace to the society'.

"The rape and murder of a girl in her teens are a distinct class of offences and cannot be equated to cases involving only rape or only murder. It is combination of two distinct heinous offences calling for capital punishment.

"The perpetrators of crime like rape and murder forfeit their right to live. Life imprisonment is highly inadequate in these cases and there is no alternative but to impose death sentence. These criminals are a menace to the society and they don't deserve to be kept alive..," Additional Sessions Judge Virender Bhat said.

"....The convicts shall be hanged till death," the judge said and imposed a fine of Rs 1.6 lakh each on them.

The three youths - Rahul (27), Ravi (23) and Vinod (23) - were arrested and booked for offences of kidnapping, unnatural sex, gang rape and murder of the girl on intervening night of February 9 and 10, 2012. The court, however, acquitted them of the charges of unnatural sex, saying no such evidence was found against them.

According to the prosecution, the girl, who was working in Gurgaon's Cyber City, was abducted by the three in a car near her house in Qutub Vihar here and was gangraped and murdered by them on February 9, 2012.

Additional Public Prosecutor Satwinder Kaur, who sought death penalty for the three, had said the crime committed by them was immensely brutal and aroused feeling of extreme indignation, as the victim's mutilated body was found three days after the incident from a field in Rodhai village in Haryana's Rewari district.

She had said the three youths had poured acid into the victim's eyes and had inserted a broken liquor bottle into her private parts. 

The court said that if any benefit is sought to be given to the convicts on the ground that they had no intention to kill the deceased but they did it out of fear of being identified, "it would amount to acknowledging that killing a girl after raping her is not a serious crime and this would encourage the rapists to kill their victims in order to escape being caught or identified".

"....Given the increase in cases of rape and murder throughout the country, I feel that time has come when the killing of the victim by the rapist, even if it is aimed at only to avoiding identification, should be viewed very seriously and the perpetrators should not be spared the gallows," it said.

After hearing the sentence, the three convicts pleaded for mercy but the court did not pay attention and said, "There cannot be a more ghastly, brutal and grotesque crime than the instant one."

"The convicts have shown extreme sense of brutality and depravity, which every member of the society would view with abhorrence and indignation. The crime committed by the three undoubtedly falls in that class which shakes the conscience of society and calls for harshest punishment," the judge said.

The court said, "There is no doubt that in the instant case the convicts were in dominating position as the victim was the lone girl and the convicts were three able-bodied boys. The victim was, therefore, hardly in a position to resist the sinister acts of the convicts.

"By the very nature of the offence it is an obnoxious act of the highest order. The victim was not only gang raped but also killed in the process. It is not possible to ignore the social impact of the crimes like rape and murder as these offences have great impact upon the social order. Public interest cannot be lost sight of and, hence, these offences per se require exemplary treatment," it said.

The judge said, "In the recent past, the society has seen a steep increase in the incidents of sexual assaults upon women and more particularly upon minor girls. Time has come when the courts should deal with such heinous crimes sternly in order to send strong message to the society so that nobody dares to engage in such brutal crimes".